ICC on the verge of scrapping Test Championship: report

The players want it. The administrators voted for it. And yet the World Test Championship looks more and more like an idea destined to be still born.

A report in the Guardian says the Test Championship – touted as the magic bullet that will give Test cricket relevance in today’s era – will likely not come to be “because sponsors and broadcasters remain lukewarm, at best, about the uncertainty which inevitably surrounds the format.”

It turns out those that line cricket’s pockets prefer to pony up for limited-overs tournaments like the Champions Trophy, which the ICC decided to shelve to make space for the Test Championship. Except now it looks like reports of the Champioms Trophy’s demise may have been exaggerated.

This development should not have been particularly surprising though, given that the Test Championships was supposed to kick off back in 2013 but the broadcaster said nothing doing as they had paid for the Champions Trophy. That India went on to win the 2013 edition of the tournament in some style, thereby generating plenty of viewer interest, would has only strengthened the broadcaster’s argument..

The other complication a Test championship faces is that it will only feature the four top ranked teams, potentially creating a situation where the host country is not participating. And with only three matches for broadcasters to work with – two semi-finals and a final – it is easy to see why a limited-overs tournament featuring the top eight teams in the world is the more lucrative option.

According to the Guardian , the ICC will formally bury the idea of a Test championship at its next meeting later this month.

If the ICC does do away with the Test Championship, it raises the troubling question of just who runs the sport. If the broadcasters and sponsors get to dictate who plays whom and in what format, then the administrators of the game become superfluous. The ICC and the national cricket boards need to decide whether their primary objective is to wring the last dollar from cricket or to protect the game’s legacy.

Given the direction in which things are headed though, the smart money should be on the bottom line trumping history.