A Test of patience

Skydivers have parachutes to ensure they don't fall flat on their butts. Administrators have 'in retrospect'.

'In retrospect', the ICC Test Championship, introduced in mid-2001, is a non-starter; 'in retrospect', it seems silly that South Africa, thumped both at home and away by Australia, have overtaken the latter as the new 'world champions', because South Africa beat Bangladesh and earned some free points!

Criticism of the Test Championship, today, will be seen as Monday morning quarterbacking. What, the question will be asked, is the point of pointing fingers at it now, when it's a done deed?

That's the thing - this last week, as South Africa pushed towards a win over Pakistan that would seal its 'champion' status, critical murmurs have been coming from every direction. And yet, the best criticism I've seen of the Test Championship was an article sent in by Abdul Hussain, a Rediff regular - way back in May of 2001, before the championship got under way; and that can hardly be called hindsight.

Don't you find yourself wondering why the man on the street appears to make more sense than your highly paid, 'professional' administrators? (One reason could be that for the guy on the street, cricket is a passion; he puts his time, energy and money into it because he wants to, not because he is paid to.)

So now what? Status quo won't be permitted to remain, if only because Australia will ask for a review and, given the logic of their case, it will be hard to deny them.

But what will a review lead to? A further tinkering with the points system? A new clause - as I saw suggested in Wisden - suggesting that any and all points accumulated against Bangladesh will not count for the next five years?

There is a syllogism beloved of politicians and administrators, and it runs thus: We have a problem. We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this.

The World Test Championship in its current form - or even in a future mutant version - is a classic example. It all started with the premise that there is a problem - to wit, Test cricket does not attract the kind of audiences, ergo money, that the one-day version does. Therefore, Test cricket has to be made attractive, we have to find a way to get the paying public back into the stands, because then the sponsors will surely follow.

Fair enough - but how does any 'championship system' spread over five years, and based on a system of points and calculations that requires your average fan to have a Masters in arithmetic, achieve this objective?

Look at it this way - suppose you didn't have the one-day World Cup. Suppose you only had the ICC's one day rankings - a beast that is, if anything, even more complicated than its Test championship. Would the average fan even bother to follow it?

If you didn't have the soccer World Cup, would you follow, with equal passion, a 'world championship' that depends on how many times Brazil plays Lithuania home and away, in the course of five years, and what the results were?

The only way to generate interest is through a competition on the ground, not on paper. And the way to do that is through a full-fledged Test championship cycle, run on the lines of the one-day version.

Sure, you can't have 10 nations play home and away in the space of 40 days, as happens with the abridged version - but surely you can create a matrix whereby, once in four years, a period of six to eight months is set aside for an intense, focused Test championship?

Split the ten Test nations (that is assuming Bangladesh holds on to its status) into two groups, depending on their current rankings so that both groups are weighted equally; have a deadline within which all competing nations must announce their squads (with no changes permitted except in case of injury), and have home-and-away Test series for both groups, with the top two from each going through to the semis, and the winners of the last four stage meeting in one climactic best of five rubber in the finals.

Why not?

Look at the pluses: For the duration of the championship, spectator interest remains high, and is not focused merely on their teams. At the end of it all, you have a champion team that merits the tag, since it took on all comers and beat them on the field of play, without benefit of calculators, higher mathematics and the like. You have a well defined event that will generate great sponsor interest - and 'sponsor' is a word that, in today's climate, should get the ICC excited.

What's the downside, do tell?