September cannot come soon enough. On the 6th and 7th to be precise, the International Cricket Council (ICC) will convene a meeting where Full Members will continue ongoing discussions about the structure and schedule of international cricket.
But headlines from those talks will, no doubt, centre upon the fate of a two-tier Test structure, given that the Indian board has publicly expressed it is not in favour, perhaps we should not hold out too much hope.
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Whatever one may think of the merits or otherwise of such a system, the most alluring thing about the details of the plan were that there would be, more or less, a fixed number of Tests for every member. Or at least a fixed number of Tests over a two-year period that counted towards the table.
Members would have the flexibility to arrange more of the Tests they want. But as a bare minimum, every nation would have to play the other, home and away, a set number of times in two years.
Presumably that would require a radical reworking of the global calendar as it currently stands.
At present there is no real calendar. Australia and England have a home season set in stone that they do not budge from, India now has the Indian Premier League (IPL) and is trying to put in place a fixed, annual international home season, too.
The rest of the world has basically to find a way around that, to fit in what they can when they can, home or away, which is patently unfair. The creeping effects of this over the years – and throw new T20 leagues into the mix as well – have been to stretch the calendar so much that it ceases to be one.
Maybe that is no bad thing for the fan because it means cricket is on all year round. But as one board official pointed out this year, it also is not so great. “If I, as a fan, want to go to London, and take my family, I will go in July because there is a chance of going to Wimbledon – that is there every year.
“Tell me apart from a couple of Tests that are fixed [around the world] in the New Year’s slot, or Boxing Day, how do I plan two years in advance?”
Another effect we have seen over the past few days, at Port-of-Spain and Durban, in Tests between West Indies and India, and South Africa and New Zealand respectively. Both were all but washed out because of rain and, subsequently, damp outfields that could not be dried up quick enough.
Only 22 out of 450 potential overs were bowled at the Queen’s Park Oval, while 102 were bowled at Kinsgmead. And if you do not watch regularly but just happened to have tuned in at various points, you would have rightly been flummoxed by the sight of sunny, blue skies and yet no play at both venues.
There were specific circumstances that led to this: at the Queen’s Park Oval, for instance, there was no Super Sopper and the covering was poor. At Kinsgmead, a recently re-laid outfield is said to have hampered the drying process.
But in reality, because of the squeeze on the calendar, the Tests were being played at unsuitable times in the first place. In the Caribbean, for example, we are right in the middle of the rainy season. There was every chance, as eventually happened, that the Test series would be rain-disrupted.
As ESPNcricinfo detailed during the Test, this was the eighth of 15 home series since 2008 that began in June or later. Until 2008, on the other hand, only four out of 48 home series began after June 1. Historically, the West Indies home season has lasted from January to May but that is all but redundant right now.
Meanwhile, Durban was first time a Test series began in August in South Africa. Their home season mirrors Australia’s and has, in better days, almost been as fixed and certain as Australia and England’s.
In this light, the expected focus on a two-tier structure could almost be a red herring.
That structure can be whatever members agree upon – as long as context and meaning are given to matches – but what was always striking as a more ambitious idea from these discussions was to consider giving each format a specific window in the calendar.
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