The prospect of a Test Championship has come a step closer as part of an extensive restructuring of the international game after the ICC’s chief executive committee (CEC) laid out a set of proposals for five-day and one-day cricket. [..]

The proposed format for Test cricket will have the Future Tours Programme (FTP) consist of a Test league running over four years with the top four teams at the end of each period qualifying for a play-off event.

Test Championship moves a step closer | Cricket News | Global | Cricinfo.com.

I like this move from the ICC, but I don’t think it is good enough.

A championship alone is not going to help Test cricket. More needs to be done.

The next steps should be introducing promotion and relegation in a multi-tier competition structure and granting more countries Test status.

Otherwise, a championship will only add to the elitist character of Test cricket.

A club for the happy few who play to crown the best among them, but have nothing to fear if they don’t perform.

Once your in, they can’t get you out, no matter how bad you are.

Not even Zimbabwe have been permanently stripped from their Test status and will just return to the party next May, which must be nothing but frustrating to Ireland.

However, a Test Championship is a step in the right direction and the ICC are apparently serious in looking to improve Test cricket, which is heartening in itself, because for a while it seemed all cricket administrators cared for was Twenty20.

What do you think? Do you even care for a Test Championship?

So today, I want to ask you a simple question:

The best form of cricket is?online surveys

Hardly representative, I know, but I am just really curious about how you, reader of this blog, feel about this.

Let me know your choice in the comments.

If you go to a match this year, try and keep a rough tally and put it in the comments of this post giving the following information. We’ll make this page accessible from the sidebar when it’s slipped down the page a bit.

Ground: Lord’s, Old Trafford, Edgbaston etc
Match type: Test match, international Twenty20, County Championship etc
Travel: Cost per person
Ticket: Cost per person
Food: Anything you spent at the ground
Drink: What you’re willing to admit you spent at the ground
Miscellaneous: Anything else you may have bought during the day
Total: Cost per person

I am not sure if Bowden has concrete plans on what he wants to do with the information he gathers.

He doesn’t strike me as someone to use his right to petition or something like that, but his is one the best known blogs out there (he also regularly writes for wisdencricketer.com and cricinfo.com) and does seem a bit more serious in his writing these days, so who knows what this might lead to?

But first of all, he needs your input. So if you have been to a game recently – or planning to see one soon – remember to help him out.

Crowe also thinks a Test Championship will give Test cricket a bit more purpose:

We have to get to a point where we are hosting a Test Championship final, and those seven games will become the great focus throughout the course of the year for all the media, the fans and the teams. It also gives all eight teams a chance, over six days, to win that Test match and progress forward.

[...]

At the moment, you have World Cups, Champions Trophies, World Twenty20, the IPL, the Champions League, all these shorter formats are up and running, dominating the landscape, and they all have a meaning and they all crown a champion. But Test cricket, which is the pinnacle, is the purest and the best form of the game, doesn’t have anything.

via Cricinfo.com

Another notable thing is that Crowe mentions six-day Test matches to make a result more likely.

And last but not least, Crowe states the importance of moving the game forward by introducing day-night Test matches:

Test cricket needs a lot more work from the marketing point of view, and that’s where day-night Test cricket must be trialled soon. [...] It won’t suit every country and the conditions in some countries won’t allow it. But I certainly think that in some places it will be wonderful for the local market.

So more than just one of my 5 steps to make Test cricket better. (I never claimed to be original, did I? ) But I do believe a lot could be done to make Test cricket better without changing it beyond recognition and these five are the best ways to do so.

What do you think? What are the best ways to make Test cricket better and what should Test cricket look like in the year 2020?

Not white, not pink, and not even red – the smart money is on an orange ball becoming essential equipment for use in one-day internationals, day-night games and, possibly, even the first day-night Test match.

via Mail Online.

An orange ball? Wtf, who comes up with something like that? It is just really bad news for the Dutch, now we will have to completely renew our wardrobe for ODI’s and T20′s ..

But on a more serious note; this is a good thing. Remember my 5 steps to make Test cricket better? This is exactly what I meant by point four: Upgrade Test cricket.

An orange ball allowing for day-night Test matches would be a huge improvement for Test cricket, making it easier for people to come and watch a game after work or school.

It is good to see manufacturers, national boards and others involved in this. Sometimes the future of Test cricket doesn’t look so grim at all.

By doing so, Pakistan are harming Test cricket. Something Andrew Miller of Cricinfo.com agrees on:

But for the good of Test cricket, and even for England’s own long-term benefit, a bit more resistance from Pakistan would not go amiss. While stalemates of the SSC variety are the greatest menace to the game, a fundamental lack of competitivity runs a close second.

via Cricinfo.com

Having more divisions will give teams more to play for, making Test cricket more competitive, which will benefit Test cricket.

If we had a mulit-tier competition structure, Pakistan, in their current form, would be looking at a degradation play-off against second-divisionists Ireland or Afghanistan.

Who would you fancy winning such a play-off?

Harbhajan told Hindustan Times that such lifeless pitches brought nothing to Test cricket, “not even spectators”.

“You just can’t have one-sided contests where the batsmen dominate,” he said. “The seamers run in and bowl their hearts out and get nothing out of it. There should be some purchase on the first two days. Later on, if the spinners bowl well, they should get bounce, if not turn.

People say Test cricket is dying. It is because of such one-sided contests. If you look at series in Australia and England, they get a lot of results because they produce good wickets, wickets that are true. That’s the way it should be everywhere.

via Cricinfo.com.

It is basically the same point Alex Bowden made earlier this week, but it is such a good one that I am happy to post it again and again.

In the highly unlikely event that Test cricket pitches were consistently made a little more challenging for batsmen, maybe people would be five times as interested in each day’s play.

Of course that’s a deliberately ludicrous statement, but is it massively untrue? I do think that there is at least an outside chance that there would be a sufficient rise in interest to make up for the loss of a great many fifth days. Who needs day five? A Test never ends in a draw on any of the first four days.

I think he is right. National boards and cricket ground owners seem to have forgotten that five days for a Test match is a maximum, not a requirement.

Test cricket is better of producing more exciting matches. It such an obvious point to make that it is easily forgotten.

• Test cricket pitches should produce more results

Not anymore though, now that I added it to the list of improvements for Test cricket.

Today, a short post as an addendum on The case for a second division in Test cricket in which I want focus on two things:

1. Promotion and relegation
2. Setting up the divisions

Promotion and relegation

So why does Test cricket need divisions and promotion/relegation play-offs? Because it brings something extra to the game. Being on top in the rankings doesn’t account for anything real now, nor does being at the bottom.

But if there is a chance on promotion, teams in the lower divisions will have an actual price to play for. Being the best in your division will actually amount to something. It gives teams a real goal to focus on.

Likewise for teams at the bottom of their division, if with a slightly different motivation.

It will make Test cricket all the more interesting.

And what’s in it for the team topping the first division? Well, it just so happens the ICC already thought about that: a Test championship tournament between the top four of the division.

Setting up the divisions

In 5 Steps to make Test cricket better I claimed it was easy to set up three divisions with Full and the Top Associate/Affiliate Members  based on the current rankings. It is, and the result looks great:

Division 1

1. India
2. South Africa
3. Australia
4. Sri Lanka
5. England
6. Pakistan

Division 2

1. New Zealand
2. West Indies
3. Bangladesh
4. Zimbabwe
5. Ireland

Division 3

1. Kenya
2. Netherlands
3. Afghanistan
4. Scotland
5. Canada

Three competitions that would have some great games and create quite a bit of excitement, don’t you think?

Lets start with some questions: Why not let Ireland play Bangladesh in a five-day game and call it a Test? Or when the Netherlands play Kenya?

Bangladesh, why do they deserve to be one of the Test-playing nations? What makes a country a Test-playing one?

And why will Zimbabwe regain Test status in 2011 after being stripped of it in 2004? Has Zimbabwe improved beyond recognition recently and returned to their playing level of the 1990′s?

Are both Bangladesh or Zimbabwe currently that much better than Ireland?

A bunch of questions and if you ask me, there are no clear answers. Test cricket seems to be more about the power inside the ICC  (Full Members have a bigger say in matters than Associate and Affiliate Members) then concerns about the quality of cricket being played.  If not, why is Zimbabwe restored to Test status?

To be clear: I am not saying “promote more countries to Full Members” (that would probably be to much for the power-hungry national boards anyway), just let them play Test cricket.

The five-day game is the biggest challenge for cricketers. Letting Associate Members play Test matches  means more players will experience this challenge and they will become better players by doing so. And if these players get better, it will be good for cricket in general.

Combined with a multi-tier competition structure having more Test-playing nations will give Test cricket a huge boost.

The game matters, traditions do not

So why not just let the Associate Members play five-day games and not call it Tests? Because that would be silly.

A international game of cricket played over five days is a Test match. It is that simple. There really is no good reason to differentiate between matches played by Full Members and Associate Members.

No, not even because of tradition. I am all for traditions, but not when they are holding back countries, players and cricket in general to develop.

Eoin Morgan and Ed Joyce choose England because they wanted to play Test cricket, not because they felt really English all of a sudden of wanted to play for a Full Member. Had Ireland been able to play Tests against the Associates Members and occasionally a Full Member they would not have switched allegiance.

Ask yourselves this last question: who is the winner in the current system? Cricket certainly is not.