ICC Test Cricket Championship?

Will cricket’s governing body ever be able to replicate a ‘World Cup’ formula for the longest form of the game? Here are some insights at what can work and what simply won’t.

Some talk has started about the “ICC Test Cricket Championship”, although how the event will eventually pan out remains a big puzzle.

Apparently, the four top-ranked teams in 2013 will qualify as semi-finalists, and there is talk of a grand final in the summer of 2013, very probably at Lord’s.

It seems to be a romantic idea, but, before we fall in love with it, we need to take a hard look at ICC’s Test ranking scheme. Imagine, for a moment, that these semi-finals were to be held today. Well, then, you’ll have a championship without Australia in the fray!

There are several serious weaknesses with ICC’s Test ranking scheme: the two really big concerns are that the scheme doesn’t distinguish between ‘home’ and ‘away’ Test matches, and the rating points have a great propensity to cluster. So an unfavourable decimal point, or a favourable cut-off date, could throw a team out of semi-final reckoning. And if India happens to be the eliminated team, the financial prospects of the event will nose-dive alarmingly.

There is a third problem: the ICC ranking scheme ranks a recent good performance higher than a similar performance 2-3 years ago. So, if what one reads is right, a team’s performance in the last year of reckoning is going to carry a greater weight in the Test Championship stakes… and this doesn’t seem right.

Actually, a very simple arrangement could make things work rather well: set up a Future Tours Programme (FTP) in which each pair of Test-playing countries plays one ‘home’ and one ‘away’ 3-Test series during the proposed four-year cycle. So if the cycle starts now, expect India to play one ‘home’ and one ‘away’ three-Test series against every Test-playing opponent in the next four years.

Ah, but there’s the rub! India would like to play more matches against Australia, and, if possible, never invite Bangladesh to play at home (how many of us know that Bangladesh hasn’t played a single Test match in India?). And England would like nothing better than playing a 5-Test Ashes series every year against Australia (especially if they look more likely to win).

There are other problems: Pakistan must again be considered ‘safe’ for cricket, cricketers must not choose to skip Tests and play instead in lucrative T20 games, all teams must uniformly agree or disagree to adopt the umpire decision review system (UDRS) … and (dare one say it?) there should be no further Test match fixing. If you want to win at Sydney, you must win fair!

A new points system needs to be considered: ideally, the points must be based not just on who won or lost, but also on the margin of victory and whether the win was at home or away.

It is not difficult to come up with a rating scheme accommodating all these variables. Indeed, back in 2001, Professor M J Manohar Rao had come up with a scheme that was almost ideal for a home-away FTP (see http://goo.gl/4m5j). This scheme could easily become the basis for devising a fair Test Cricket Championship.

But, to be honest, this idea of a Test Cricket Championship does not seem too ‘hot’. Four years is a long time to sustain interest: teams change, captains change, venues change, and pitches change. Simply put, in four years, champions can stop looking like champions; and that would tremendously devalue any championship.