Derek Pringle explains how it would be possible for the ICC to deliver a Test World Championship
Test cricket is the only form of the game the International Cricket Council does not have a marquee competition for, so you’d have thought it would have started one ages ago.
To be fair, they have twice tried to get a Test Championship underway, in 2013 and in 2017, and while there have been tentative murmurings again, recently, the idea tends to get kicked into the long grass by countries worried that it will reduce the value of their broadcasting deals.
Test cricket might be the most fascinating of the three formats across which international cricket can market itself, but as many have discovered it is an awkward fit with our modern lives. Crowds still turn up in England and, if the right opponent is present, Australia and India, but elsewhere it is an effort to get more than a few thousand spectators through the gates.
Broadcasters also find Test cricket a challenge to fit into their schedules. Like many who need to plan, they prefer certainty, something bilateral tours between two countries offer them but not a Test Championship, at least not the knockout stage.
With the latter, they would be unable to control the participating teams, the length of the match, or even whether there would be a champion – draws being part of the fabric of Test cricket. So, when ICC recently proposed a Test Championship to replace the Champions Trophy, a 50-over tournament of dubious worth, broadcasters insisted the latter be re-instated.
With T20 leagues proliferating and turning players heads away from traditional forms like never before, many believe Test cricket needs a stronger context, like a championship, if it is to survive. You might argue that the ratings already provide a league table from which the top team is decided, but that does not provide the global showpiece a knockout tournament would ensure.
To create one you first have to decide how often it should be contested. A four-year cycle would give the top eight-ranked teams enough time to play each other home and away, over a series comprising a minimum three Tests, to decide the new league order. Old rivalries like the Ashes can remain as five-Test extravaganzas and there should still be enough time to fit in most of the T20 leagues that help to line the pockets of leading players.
On the other hand you could neutralise some of the T20 threat by improving rewards elsewhere. With most current players and administrators still claiming Test cricket to be the ultimate form of the game, why not reflect that primacy by increasing, exponentially, the pay and prize money?
A top prize of £10 million for the winners of the Test Championship, £5 million for the runners-up, and £3 million and £1 million for three and four, would be a start.
ICC would also pay each cricketer in the top division £15,000 for each game played, remuneration in addition to whatever their Boards pay them for representing their country. ICC could afford it as the costs of setting up a Test Championship would be a fraction of those for World Cups with only the knock-out stage incurring much organisational cost.
To make a series as meaningful as possible, I would have promotion and relegation, with teams like Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Ireland, Netherlands and Scotland jostling for promotion out of a second division. The first two on that list are unlikely to vote for it, but it would be an incentive for them to improve, and quickly. Only teams finishing fifth and six would be sat with their bats idle during this period.
While the first four teams in the top division (one v two, three v four) decide the leading places over the best-of-three matches, the bottom two sides would play the top two in the second division over a single Test home and away. I understand that opportunities for those in the second division would present themselves only every four years, but they remain an opportunity nonetheless.
There would be no protectionism for England, Australia and India from relegation, as demanded by them in last year’s shake-up of ICC’s resources. If they cannot stay away from relegation with the money they spend on their cricket teams they deserve to go down.
Logistically, this will not be straightforward, but Rugby Super 15 franchises traverse the Southern Hemisphere to play each other before playing a short knock-out tournament. Obviously a rugby team has less kit than a cricket team, but there are those who feel that cricket could streamline itself on that front anyway.
The travel burden would be eased if countries specialised by having distinct red and white-ball teams, but if they couldn’t, one-day series could still be fitted in, especially if they were to be used mainly for trying new players out in the lead ups to World Cups.
Draws are the big, and some would say insoluble, issue for a Test Championship, given that modern mores demand a winner. Australia’s Sheffield Shield competition circumvented the draw by awarding the trophy to the side scoring the most runs in their first innings. Yet, that often saw the top-ranked finalist, with the right to play at home, produce docile pitches in the hope of winning the toss and racking up a big, insurmountable score.
The final of a Test Championship would be played over the best of three, though still at the home of the No 1 ranked team. They should at least have that perk for finishing top.
You cannot plan for weather, but one idea of removing the draw from the equation is to play until there is a result, the so called ‘timeless’ Test. The only problem with that, apart from broadcasters hating the scheduling uncertainty, is that the last one, 76 years ago in Durban, was described as interminably dull – and that when attention spans were far longer than today.
In the unlikely event that all three matches of the final are drawn, the winner could be decided by taking the runs per wicket lost over the three matches for each team, and then subtracting the runs per wicket taken by them, and deciding the winner like that. It may not be a satisfying way to decide a champion, but it is more likely to reward positive cricket which would then lead to a result anyway.
The other bugbear for many, to the point of obsession, is the pitches for the final, and who would produce them? I have never understood the chin-stroking given to this. Tosses are not guaranteed and the surface has to be played on by both teams. Also, pitches are an inexact science and while turgid ones tend to produce dull cricket, sporty ones can be too bowler-friendly for a good spectacle between bat and ball.
One solution to obviate any bias would be to play the final at a neutral venue, but that is likely to prove unsatisfactory if say you had Australia and South Africa, with fast bowlers to the fore, playing on a dead heap in Mumbai.
Another suggestion is to cede groundsman duties to the ICC, but I wouldn’t bother. Test cricket has got on without them preparing pitches for almost 140 years and nobody has been shot yet.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday February 19 2016
