Yes, it sucks, but its understandable. The test league
needs to happen. It'll keep tests relevant and it'll make people in India care about some SA/SL test as it may affect India's spot in the standings.
And lets be honest, AFG, IRE, and ZIM would be locks for the bottom three if they were any part of a test league right now. Give 'em 5 years of playing actual tests against each other and Bangladesh and some odd little one-offs against England (Ireland's first test is hoped to be at Lords) or New Zealand or whoever will play them, and then lets re-evaluate whether we still want to have a 9-team league.
And for anyone who hasn't see the proposal, it's a bit complicated right now, but it'll be a 9-team league that runs from 2019-2023, with the top two meeting in a final. Crazy convoluted details here:
ICC Test, ODI leagues closer to reality | Cricket | ESPN Cricinfo
If that plan goes through, don't be surprised to hear rumblings about increasing the size of the next test league in 2021 or 2022, if it looks like 1 or 2 of those other three teams may be worthy of a spot.
And as you'd read in that article, Ireland would have home ODI series with New Zealand, Bangladesh, South Africa, and Zimbabwe guaranteed from 2020-2022, so it's not like they'd be left out in the cold. Getting into the convoluted part, with 8 of the 12 allowed test series taken up by the test league, that still leaves 4 additional test series for the big 9, and New Zealand, Bangladesh, or South Africa could be talked into using one of their extra 4 on their scheduled visits to Ireland.
But yeah, Ireland, Afghanistan, and Zimbabwe will be playing lots of tests against each other over that 4 year span. Similar to the annual Bangladesh/Zimbabwe series we seemed to be getting about 5-10 years ago.
As a general idea, that's probably the way to go. Play a decent amount against teams that are on your level, with a few odd ones here and there against the big boys just to keep sight of where you are compared to the top level.
But like I said, assuming we see a few wins for the Afghans or the Irish against the likes of BAN/SL/NZ/WI or whoever over that span, there's every reason to expect that there will be a strong push to expand that league beyond 9 teams for the following cycle.