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I love a great Test series. The Ashes 2005, The Border-Gavasker trophy 2001 and the Frank Worrell trophy 1999 are all glittering examples of how enthralling a cricket tour can be.
But great Test series are very much the exception. Most series are typified by the home team grinding the visiting team into the dirt, Test after Test after Test.
Moreover, most Test series lack relevance. Sure they are tallied in the ICC’s Test championship rankings, but this approach has failed to capture the imagination of cricket followers in the way it was hoped.
Yet these series roll on and on around the world in empty stadiums for the most part, doing the game a disservice.
Further, they are anachronisms belonging to a pre-aviation age; a time where if you travelled half way around the world by boat to play cricket, you may as well stay on for a few games.
I feel perhaps the time has come to dispense with them.
Now before you cry foul that that would mean the end of the Ashes, let’s say we only dispense with series that aren’t working.
My suggestion is we have a world cricket league, say every second year. That way we preserve iconic and sacred series like the Ashes (which would be arranged in the off years).
The cricket league would consist of two groups of five teams, playing four home and four away Tests during a calendar year with the two top teams playing off in a final. A great example of how beneficial this would be is New Zealand’s performance in 2014.
The Kiwis had one of their best ever years in Test cricket and could have conceivably topped the group they were in. This would have resulted in a rare Test world final appearance and a chance at a cricket crown.
But what did their wonderful performance amount to? Jumping a place or two on the ICC Test rankings to an underwhelming fifth – hardly anything for the long suffering Kiwis to pop a bottle of bubbly over.
I can also see a league system benefiting the players.
To stay with the tour seems draconian to me, as it uproots the players from their families for months and months. And I ask, how many times do they make mention of this when they retire prematurely from Tests?
More compellingly for adopting a league, perhaps we could tie short-form cricket into it? Perhaps all three formats could be combined to find a comprehensive world champion?
The way I see this working is the same group manner and that each team play home-and-away Tests, ODIs and Twenty20s. A team would fly into a country and play all three games in the space of 10 days, perhaps starting with the T20, then the ODI and culminating in the Test – can’t you see the excitement rising after each contest?
By doing this you would nurture a crossover interest from fans of all three formats, which surely is what cricket administrations are trying to foster. More points would also be awarded for the longer formats, so four points for a Test win, two points for a win in ODIs and T20s.
In any case, whichever way it is approached, and even if it’s just Tests, a league over the anachronistic tour is clearly more desirable. How could it not be?
And for those of you who feel otherwise, consider this: why don’t we have tours in the AFL or NRL? Why don’t we have Collingwood touring NSW next season and playing Greater Western Sydney and no-one else for five games? If you don’t know the reason, I’ll tell you why: because it would be as irrelevant and as boring as most Tests.
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