This could be the most important week in cricket since India won the T20 World Cup ten years ago. The importance of that result became clear only in retrospect when the IPL changed the way the game was consumed (to use marketing jargon). That was unplanned. On this occasion, however, the emphasis is on planning. On giving international cricket context and relevance so every match, every series becomes a part of the whole, a piece of the main.
The International Cricket Council meeting in Auckland is expected to stamp its approval on a World Test championship over a two-year cycle, thus giving an essentially meaningless exercise (which is the charm of Test cricket) a raison d’etre .
In the nine-team Test league, countries play three series at home and three away over the two years of the championship, while in the 13-team ODI league there are two series home and away each year. That is the proposal. It is scheduled to commence after the 2019 World Cup.
Thanks to the rapid spread of lucrative domestic T20 cricket across the world and its greater attraction for a large number of players, a way had to be found to pump fresh significance into Test cricket.
The plan had to bring on board the players, the cricket boards, television and sponsors; yet there was an inevitability about it. When, in the mid-90s, Wisden editor Matthew Engel called for a Test championship, the so-called ‘Wisden Plan’ was received well. Later, the ICC decided that 2017 would see the first final after a cycle starting in 2013, but there were difficulties both financial and psychological that came in the way. India were not too keen, for one.
The allure of a champion team in sport — however artificial the means to arrive at that conclusion — is irresistible. It is what television executives live for, what they say attracts new audiences, gives the fans something else to argue over and lends a focus to team preparations.
There is too the lure of having a world champion in each format of the game. The climactic moment — Wimbledon finals, World Cup soccer final, the 100m at the Olympics — gives sport its special appeal.
The rush for neatness might upset some. A series “for no reason at all” is a cricket speciality, a wonderful counter to internationals in other sports which lead to something or the other.
During a one-day international recently, a respected follower of the sport whispered conspiratorially in my ear: “Here’s a secret — Test cricket is dying.” He need not have bothered to keep his voice down, that sentiment is being expressed freely and rather vociferously in various forums across the world.
The question is, do we give in and let the market decide, or see that the more lucrative formats subsidise the longest one, or somehow ensure that gifted players retain a passion for Test cricket and continue to see it as the highest form of the game?
Within a decade the basic question in the sport has changed. It is no longer whether a youngster is good enough for Test cricket, but whether he is interested in playing Test cricket at all.
Michael Atherton believes one way to save Test cricket is for “international teams to pick the same squad across all formats — with one points table and a massive incentive for the winners over a two-year period — to encourage players to delay specialisation (as T20 players), and so protect Test, first-class and international cricket.” There must be incentives to excel across all formats.
Something had to be done. If that something is a Test championship that ensures every series gives teams points that go towards where they finish at the end of the cycle, we cannot know now. The ICC certainly hopes it is.
Despite its image as a hidebound, reactionary sport, cricket has been introducing changes faster than most others. T20, day-night Tests, neutral umpires, third umpires, match referees, white balls and pink balls, the DRS, promotion of two teams — Afghanistan and Ireland — in the same year, are all recent developments. Four-day Tests too might be a part of this slightly irritating neatness. Start on Thursday, finish on Sunday, travel on Tuesday, start on Thursday and so on through a series.
Some of these changes were driven by television, but that fact alone cannot taint them. Test cricket is being chiseled and buffed and re-shaped to fit into a grand plan which comes with no guarantees. But it has to be made attractive to both performers and audiences for its survival. Today’s youngsters make more money in a T20 season than some even a generation ago made in their whole careers; it is this imbalance the ICC is hoping to correct.
There is too the attempt at inclusiveness, necessary if the sport is not to split with Test cricket and the shorter formats going their separate ways, with separate governing bodies and different sets of players. Thus becoming different sports with a common parentage.
