I thought C# Generics are useful also for type convertion. I messed code alittle and the emergent code snippet looks fine for me. It is easy and simple. 

public class GenericConverter
{
    public static T Parse<T>(string sourceValue) where T : IConvertible
    {
      return (T)Convert.ChangeType(sourceValue, typeof(T));
    }

    public static T Parse<T>(string sourceValue, IFormatProvider provider) where T : IConvertible
    {
      return (T)Convert.ChangeType(sourceValue, typeof(T), provider);
    }
}

//Usage
 DateTime datetime = GenericConverter.Parse<DateTime>("12.10.2007");


IFormatProvider providerEN = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US", true);
IFormatProvider providerTR = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("tr-TR", true);

DateTime x = GenericConverter.Parse<DateTime>("12.10.2007", providerTR); // ddMMyyyy
 DateTime y = GenericConverter.Parse<DateTime>("12.10.2007", providerEN); // MMddyyyy
int iValue = GenericConverter.Parse<int>("12");


Enjoy !.

Doga.