Imagine life without the Ashes. This is a clear and present danger if cricket’s leading administrators institute a two-division Test championship.
For more than a decade after Australia flogged England in the seminal 1989 Ashes, and continued to flog the Poms every couple of years, the two countries would have been playing in different divisions.
Australia were on the rise and in 1995 would knock off the West Indies to be the best Test team in the world. England were joyfully hopeless.
If two divisions existed at that stage the most significant contest in world cricket would have vanished, along with all the income it generates for both countries.
Given that England are yet to qualify for a World Test Championship final while Australia have just qualified for their second, there is no guarantee it won’t happen again, with disastrous consequences for both cricketing nations.
Perhaps the most amusing part of a retrospective two-division system is that during the mid 1980s Australia and England would have been meeting each other in the second division.
Following the retirement of Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh in 1984, then a decimation of the first-class ranks by successive South African rebel tours, Australia went almost four years and eight series without a single series victory.
And once England had beaten a weakened Australia 3-1 in the 1985 Ashes, the Poms won two of their next 12 series, the 1986-87 Ashes in Australia 2-1 and beating Sri Lanka during 1988 in a one-off Test at Lord’s
So while two divisions can be nice in theory to try and fix broken systems, simply cutting a broken system in half doesn’t fix it. Look at England’s bloated county system.
Reigning county champions Surrey have 26 current male players on the club’s list. Multiply that by the 18 counties and you get 468. Are there really 468 players in the UK who can be considered first class?
Australia with the Border Gavaskar Trophy. (Photo by Santanu Banik/Speed Media/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
English cricket sold its soul to prop up the 18 counties because there were no turkeys who wanted to vote for Christmas. So instead, after possibly England’s greatest Ashes victory, 2005, when fans lined up around blocks in the hope of getting a seat, the England Cricket Board took Sky’s money and went behind a paywall.
This has ensured that most people in England would never have seen their country’s two most recent all-time run scorers, Alastair Cook and Joe Root, make a single run. They probably don’t know who this pair of hidden luminaries are.
But then these county-centric Pommy administrators have spent decades turning a national pastime into a curiosity.
Now cricket has sold its soul to Twenty20, which would be fine if the money was going into saving Test cricket, but it’s not.
Instead most Test nations are vulnerable to losing their best players as they get sucked into the vortex of the IPL and the increasing number of T20 competitions around the world dominated by IPL franchises.
Ask the West Indies about Nicholas Pooran, the hard-hitting wicketkeeper who at 29 has played 373 Twenty20 matches, but not a single Test. Or South Africa about Quinton de Kock, 32, who quit Test cricket three years ago and has played 369 T20s. At least he played 54 Tests. There are plenty more examples.
Test cricket is in such a state that South Africa, who were the first to qualify for the World Test Championship final and are scheduled to meet defending title holders Australia at Lord’s in June, will not play a single Test in South Africa until September next year.
This is the same South Africa that sent a C-grade team to New Zealand last February because the IPL franchises who run South Africa’s T20 competition refused to release any of South Africa’s contracted players.
Quinton de Kock. (Photo by Steve Bell – ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
Two divisions in Test cricket would only have any hope of working if there was a central pool set up to cover the tour costs of countries, and players were guaranteed a base rate of say $20,000 a Test, which is about what the Australian players earn. This would make Test cricket more attractive to more players globally.
If this pool was set up on a prorata revenue basis, most countries would pay nothing, Australia and England about a dollar each, and India the remaining $100 million or so given the billions they make from international cricket and the IPL.
But the new International Cricket Council Chairman, India’s Jay Shah, has given little indication of being a good global citizen. Quite the opposite.
In a spectacular display of kowtowing to India 18 months ago, the ICC board approved a revamped revenue-distribution model, with the Board of Control for Cricket in India taking home nearly 40% of the ICC’s annual net earnings in the current four-year commercial cycle.
The BCCI will earn close to $367 million annually from 2024 to 2027 – or 38.5% of ICC’s approximate annual earning of $960 million – while none of the other 11 Test nations have a share in double digits percentages.
So Jay Shah could save Test cricket by simply refunding the BCCI’s share of ICC funds. Instead, watch for an expanded IPL.
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