ICC hasn't been as conservative as people like to believe. They have and are changing rules in order to accommodate more teams and making Cricket a global sports. They have increased the number of ODI teams from 10 to 20 with 8 spots for grabs by any associate teams with a long league with promotions and relegations. T20 are more generous with International status provided to all teams. So, T20 and ODI are already a merit based format. Test is a more traditional format that still needs change. The less interest in changing the test status might also be due to it being the least popular among the three formats and it takes days for a match to complete. Yet, they might extend the Test world championship to a top level league and crate a lower league that accommodates all ODI teams in the future.
ICC is changing cricket rules to make sport global especially in ODI and T20 formats which are now more open to many nations. Idea of merit based system like in football is great way for smaller teams to rise to top. Test cricket is harder to change because it is so long and traditional as we know its take 5 days. However adding lower league to Test Championship will give more teams chance to play and make format more popular.
ICC will change the rules but I think ICC should take some steps to spread the spread of cricket globally. In every world cup we see some known teams playing whereas in football world cup we see some teams qualify for the main stage and football craze is there all over the world. The reason why cricket is less popular is because there is less discussion about cricket and people don't know much about cricket. The main reason for this may be that cricket is a long time game and European and American countries don't know about cricket in advance due to which their interest in it is always less. I heard that cricket will be included in the upcoming Olympics this is a good thing for cricket because we will see many new teams in the Olympics and hopefully some of them will join the cricket series.