The proposed two-tier system rewards merit and can save Test cricket from disappearing

Context. It is a word that is thrown around so often when discussing international cricket it has somewhat ironically started to lose meaning. What people mean when they say it is that bilateral matches should have something riding on them outside of the matches themselves. In reality the only context that Test cricket has is what the players and fans bring with them based on emotion and history. This hampers the sport’s growth with the casual fan, and even those that love the game.

England are currently playing a Test series against Sri Lanka, a series that they look set to win 3-0. This win means very little, it could have an impact on the Test rankings that are pernicious and difficult to understand, but England moving to third on that table from fifth at present has absolutely no meaning. If England were fifth and the sixth place spot meant relegation all of a sudden whether they win 2-0 or 3-0 means something.

Under the current system England could lose every Test series that they played for the next decade and it would have absolutely no consequences for them. Conversely, Ireland and Afghanistan can win every single match they play and they still would not have the same status as “Full Members”. There has been a theoretical pathway for Test cricket for a couple of years now, although it is more ethereal than actual. But under that route to playing Tests the status was temporary and difficult to obtain.

Test cricket is in essence a series of friendlies played between different countries on an entirely random basis. There is no formal fixture lists, you don’t have to play each team home and away, in fact you don’t need to play a team you don’t want to at all. England have not played Zimbabwe in any format since 2007 and have not played a single Test match against them since 2003. In fact Zimbabwe, one of just ten teams that are allowed to play Tests, have had so few fixtures they aren’t even on the rankings table anymore. While there are numerous political issues that explain this, it does show that there is no compulsion to play against a team that you do not want to.

The proposal for two divisions of Test cricket put forward by the ICC’s Chief Executive, Dave Richardson, is an attempt to alleviate some of these issues. Allowing something as simple as promotion and relegation means that the sport has something other than the fixture itself. His plan is to have a top division of seven teams and a lower division of five teams with promotion and relegation between them. The teams in each division would play each other home and away over a two year period, with the team finishing the top of the lot winning the title of Test world champions.

This means there would be 12 teams involved allowing two Associate teams, most likely Ireland and Afghanistan, to play Test cricket for the first time. While for many this would not be going anywhere close to far enough, it would be the cricket administration equivalent of Neil Armstrong jumping off the Apollo 11 lunar lander. Quite what happens if the Full Members finish below the Associates is not clear, but hopefully full details will emerge if and when this is all agreed.

It is breathtakingly simple, but there will still be resistance to it. The idea of a system of promotion and relegation was mentioned during the “Big 3” reforms in January 2014 that saw England, India and Australia take a stranglehold on the sport. Hilariously, the suggestion at the time was that those three teams could not be relegated meaning that they could finish fifth, sixth and seventh in the table and the side placed fourth would be dropped to the lower league.

There was sound financial reasoning behind that attempt to keep those big three teams playing against each other for the big prize. They are the draw cards and generate a huge amount of income. If England couldn’t play Australia because they were in different leagues it would mean those boards haemorrhaging television income. The consequence of India not touring would actually be more economically devastating. Still, saying they couldn’t be relegated was completely ridiculously and the antithesis of sport as a level playing field. Imagine if Manchester United were guaranteed a Champions League spot and lifelong membership of the Premier League.

This proposal from the ICC takes that into account. As reported by Tim Wigmore in The Guardian in February this two tier structure would take up a maximum of five months of the year and the rest of the time sides would be free to play who they wished regardless of which division they are in. The Ashes is safe, fret not.

There is no reason why any of the “Big 3” should even end up in the lower division, they have resources and infrastructure that outstrip any other Test playing nation by a distance, let alone the Associates. ECB Chairman Colin Graves admitted as much this week when he said: “If England end up in division two it’s our own fault.”

This development of a two-tier system is far from perfect, it is a compromise that allows the sport to move forward while protecting the interests of the ICC Full Members. But it is a start. We are moving towards a structure that sees cricket based on meritocracy for the first time. Considering that cricket began as an international sport when the USA played Canada in 1844 it has taken a while for this to happen.

And it hasn’t happened yet. All of these proposals will go before the ICC Annual Conference that is taking place in Edinburgh at the end of this month. It could be that the self-interested boards of the Full Member nations shoot it down, deciding that they would rather keep the status quo that allows them to remain in the top flight of the sport in perpetuity.

Those that have followed the governance of cricket for any length have time know that cynicism about any real change to the Victorian way that the sport is administered is a fair safer bet if you want to avoid disappointment. All too often there has been a whiff of hope that is quickly blown away when it is close to becoming a reality.

This time there is real hope that those that run cricket will realise that real change that allows the sport to have merit at its heart is the way to save Test cricket from disappearing from the public consciousness.

Let us hope.