After the conclusion of the 2010 Intercontinental Cup on Sunday the IBAF Executive Committee met at a hotel in Taichung, Taiwan to discuss the planned changes of the International Calendar. Also on the table was Major League Baseball representative James Pearce, as both sides trying to find common ground between Baseball World Cup (BWC) and World Baseball Classic (WBC).
According to the official report on the IBAF website, Major League Baseball is going to submit a proposal to the IBAF Executive within the next 60 days. Pearce already presented a plan to develop the WBC into a tournament with a qualifying system, which is rumored since a few months. However while this might sound as if an agreement is well on its way, a DPA report on an Asian website has a different opinion.
The article on Monsters and Critics, quotes Tzung-Cheng Ling, Secretary General of the Taiwanese Baseball Association, with a more pessimistic view:
“The executive committee could not reach consensus on proposals to promote baseball for young players and on replacing the Baseball World Cup with the World Baseball classic.”
Further the report says that the IBAF executive has decided to postpone the matter until its next meeting in Cuba next February. With that a Baseball World Cup in the current format in 2011 is still a possibility, although there is still not determined, who is going to host the event. According to IBAF.org Panama was the first country to officially submit a candidature to the Executive, while M&C says Taiwan and Cuba are expressing their interest in organizing the BWC. The speculation will continue.