Rumours spread throughout the week that the scheduled 2017 World Test Cricket Championship was almost certainly going to be cancelled.
This was an event that would have acted as the pinnacle of a Test cricketer’s career; it would have provided the first real indicator of which team really was the best in the world.
It would have been a tournament that was made for the players, for the people who make the game of cricket possible, to have an opportunity to achieve success of the highest order because in all honesty the two World Cups currently contested do not do the game of cricket justice.
But the rationale behind the seemingly inevitable cancellation illustrates quite brutally the sheer level of control that companies have over modern sport.
The fact that a competition of such great importance that would have finally provided something meaningful for all teams to aim at, just because sponsors and broadcasters “weren’t that interested” has left me dumbfounded.
At the moment the pinnacle of Test match cricket only involves Australia and England while for other nations the only goal to aim for is reaching the top of a ranking procedure so complex it reads like computer code does for me.
Oh and if your team is in the incredibly exciting position of heading the rankings you get a small cut in a monetary bonus.
Now I know that quite a lot of cricketers may argue that they see the World Cup as their main goal but I assure you that if there was a Test alternative, opinions would soon change.
But then again I see cricket in an entirely different light to sponsor and broadcasting companies.
These businesses assess sport on the basis of financial opportunity and for some reason these people sitting in the hot seat aren’t giving this event the thumbs up.
This probably has to do with waning viewer numbers of Test cricket throughout the world as a whole, but in all honesty I think there are a two factors that I believe would prevent the event from being a ratings flop.
Firstly, people watch television when it is exciting and entertaining.
That was the whole reason why television was developed, as a form of entertainment. Ashes Series are the highest rating of all Test series because of the history and rivalry involved in the event.
There is an awful lot of history associated with Test cricket in general and when you combine this with the rivalry that exists between the top four sides in the world, public interest will increase.
Add to this the tightness of matches between four sides that are at the top of their game and the entertainment factor will increase.
And secondly cricket ratings increase in countries when their team is playing well. Because the teams that would have qualified for this tournament had to be in the top four, they would have been winning a fair few games.
This adds a massive boost to public interest, as has been illustrated in Australia with a massive surge in viewing ratings even of the One Day series following the 5-0 whitewash of England.
These would be successful teams playing and this would generate a lot more public interest and hence viewers.
And, one final aspect to consider, surely a Test Championship would be met with at bare minimum the same and most likely more interest than the Champions Trophy which was scrapped to make way for this event.
That had sponsors and broadcasters making it viable in 2013 and years before that so would the Test Championship really be more than a risk?
Surely if you consider the factors that would help ratings and the value of such an event to the world of cricket then a Test World Championship should go ahead.
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