There was a time when international cricket consisted of intermittent series of Test Matches between the Test-playing nations. In 1971, One Day Internationals (ODIs) were introduced.
ODI cricket enabled something that international cricket had never before seen – tournaments involving multiple teams.
Soon the format was sufficiently popular that a World Cup could be organised. And in 1975, the first Cricket World Cup was played in England.
The World Cup, like most global tournaments of note, has continued to be played at four-year intervals since.
The system of Test Cricket and ODI cricket co-existing well served the cricketing public for many years. Our insatiable appetite for cricket would eventually lead to the creation of the Twenty20 format – which has again revolutionised the game.
All three formats have merit – Tests have great prestige, Twenty20’s have excitement, and the ODI has a mix of both.
The Cricket World Cup is now one of the most prestigious tournaments in cricket – rivaling the Ashes.
It was decided that Twenty20 cricket deserved a tournament of similar status. As a result, the ICC created the ICC World Twenty20. First played in 2007, the World Twenty20 had the potential to become a great tournament.
However, several perplexing decisions have dampened this potential.
For a start, the World Twenty20 should never have been played in the same year as the Cricket World Cup. Not only does it congest the cricketing calendar for the year in question, but it also diminishes the prestige of both tournaments.
A second bad decision was to evade the normal protocol in world sport of holding major tournaments every four years.
All of the world’s great sporting events – the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, the Rugby World Cup, EURO Football, or the Commonwealth Games – are held quadrennially.
By contrast, the ICC has taken the rather unusual step of staging the first three World Twenty20s in 2007, 2009 and 2010. Not only does this cheapen the value of the tournament, it further congests an already suffocated cricket calendar.
Next month South Africa will host the ICC Champions Trophy.
This tournament pits the best eight nations in ODI cricket against each other in a round robin format. The best four teams from the round robin will face each other in the finals to determine … that is where I draw a blank.
We already have a World Cup, so it is not to determine the best team in the world. The tournament strikes me as being little more than a cash cow.
As a cricket fan, I implore the ICC to abolish the Champions Trophy.
It is a tournament no one takes seriously. In an era when congestion of sporting calendars is a large problem, the Champions Trophy is one tournament that could easily be discarded.
Furthermore, I call on the ICC to turn the World Twenty20 into a quadrennial tournament – spaced two years apart from the Cricket World Cup.
This would increase the prestige of both tournaments, relieve time pressures and allow all three varieties of cricket to co-exist peacefully.
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