It’s been nearly half a century since four mop tops from Liverpool told us, “‘Cause I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love”. That’s certainly been true of the Indian cricket board (BCCI), whose coffers have swelled even as resentment towards it around the world has grown. Some of the anger comes from fossils that still yearn for a time when the far reaches of the Commonwealth were “kept in their place”, but there are many others with not a racist or imperial bone in their bodies disturbed by what they see as the organisation’s two primary mottos: “Show me the money” and “Our way or the highway”.
Back in early October, on the day of the Champions League final, I walked into a suite full of posh toffs and cricket officials from across the globe to talk to Haroon Lorgat, the International Cricket Council’s chief executive. One of the topics we discussed was a proposed world championship of Test cricket.
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Nice spotting man!
It was exciting to read… A world cup in test cricket… so majestic….
Dileep, interesting article, but I have numerous criticisms of the particulars.
Firstly, logistically, organising fixtures across hemispheres is much harder than local ones, because of the limitation of summer schedules. I am very much in favour of developing regional rivalries, but it is not a good basis for a world championship.
Secondly, I was once a big fan of a league style test championship, and have since ditched the idea. None of the boards seem to want it, albeit for different reasons: the big-4 because they realise it limits their ability to organise high profit bilateral fixtures; the rest because they realise that oth the existing logistics and the ongoing (but staled) expansion of the game are likely to result in a tiered competition, in which none of them want to be in the lower rungs.
This is why Martin Crowe proposed the dodgy workaround that is on the table. Preserve the existing elitist
108 team structure, tack on a final every year or two. You could do that now, with the top four ranked sides, and I don’t see it as being much superior.Thirdly, the big boys don’t want change for pretty good reasons. They need that money, and the more alternative sources of player income (like the IPL) come to the fore, the more they need it. I’d like a test world championship too, but it shouldn’t have to come at the expense of a five test Ashes series.
If we move past this obsession with having a major trophy handed out every year or two, then it is relatively straight-forward to construct a championship, preserve bilateral series AND get a healthy mix of games between the small and big players.
My preference (which I am in the process of outlining on my blog) is for regional and world championships, the former acting as qualifiers for the latter. In short, 3 conferences – Southern hemisphere (AUS, NZ, RSA, ZIM, KEN etc.), Asian (IND, PAK, SRI, BAN, AFG, UAE etc.), Northern (WI, ENG, IRE, SCO, CAN, NED, etc.).
Year 1: regional championships in each home summer, with emphasis on games between the major players, but including the minnows to allow them access, and provide a pathway for development. Top 2 southern and asian go to the test championship, plus top 1 northern. Next best qualifier in each division play off for the final berth in the next season
Year 2: 3rd southern, 3rd asian, 2nd northern, 3 test series home/away league format. winner to progress to test championship, losers to join 4th southern, 4th asian, 3rd northern in plate championship (plus winner of plate qualifiers). Put the ODI World Cup somewhere here as well.
Year 3: 6 team test championship: two groups of 3 (balanced by region), playing 3 test series home/away league format. winners of each group play final: a 2 test home away (4 test series) in Sept/Oct.
That is a pretty full schedule (though actually less cricket than now), but still leaves (for most) year 2 and year 4 for major bilateral tours. Not to mention the endless cycle of odi and t20 games. Your thoughts?