Saving Test Cricket

Sports blogs/span>


So the ICC are set to consider some new proposals by the Chief Executive's Committee (CEC) about how best to "lead and protect" the game, most notably, the introduction of a long overdue Test Cricket League, in order "to provide some context" to more matches.

The CEC has proposed to instigate a league based on the same format of Test Cricket at the moment, based on the FTP (Future Tours Program) with an added "play off" between the top four teams in the league at the end of a 4 year cycle in order to determine the overall winner. Whilst this will undoubtedly create a culmination of excitement every four years, with the league up for grabs, I do not believe these proposals go nearly far enough.

In the words of ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat "restructuring Test Cricket is a significant strategic challenge" and "achieving balance and unanimous agreement is not easy" and I would have to agree with him. The cricket world currently has so many different national boards, privately owned competitions, formats of the game and conflicting interests amongst powerful individuals that a solution that suits everyone is going to be practically impossible. However, this latest attempt at protecting the purest form of the game stinks of a lack of effort and imagination.

Firstly, I do not believe that this solution actually tackles the fundamental issues facing test cricket at the moment. In my opinion these are:

-Dwindling attendances in many countries, especially New Zealand, the West Indies and India

-A lack of dynamism and interest in the face of new competition from 20-20 matches

-Reduced competitiveness of many test series

-The lack of improvement from developing cricketing nations

In order for Test Cricket to become commercially viable again, as apart from The Ashes and iconic series such as Australia against India many national boards actually lose money by staging test series, it needs at the very least to regenerate interest in the nine test cricket playing nations. I believe in order to do this, every game must mean something.

There shouldn't be a one sided four test series between England and Pakistan where the only topic of conversation is "What does this mean for the Ashes in five months time?" Because, as every player, coach and analyst worth his salt keeps saying, it is to all intensive purposes irrelevant. How England prepare and how England play down under will be important for the ashes and, save for perhaps a little confidence, the recent series will have had no effect whatsoever.

So why will anyone remember the series? Perhaps for Pietersen's rather spectacular loss of form, or more likely, because of the corruption allegations attached to the final test. By holding a, to all intensive purposes, meaningless game which is not providing a great deal in terms of finance, interest or stature to the Pakistan players or the Pakistan Cricket Board, Test Cricket leaves itself open to the dirty underworld of corruption.

Imaging you were playing for Pakistan and if you won this game the chance of winning the test championship remained a distinct possibility, or you needed to win to avoid relegation, rather than a game where the most that is at stake is a few ranking points in a system no one is particularly interested in. In which game are you more likely to bowl a few no balls for cash?

In order to fight corruption is one theory as to why this idea is suddenly being rolled out by the ICC now, but Test Cricket needs to shape up not just to shrug off corruption, but to stimulate interest in The Beautiful Game again around the world.