What a fantastic result for India against all the odds to win at the WACA in Perth. I have thoroughly enjoyed this Test series and cannot wait to see the last match in Adelaide. Indeed I would have enjoyed this series even more had I known it was on the horizon and anticipated the build up and the key battles. However it arrived and we were off. It wasn't until they had nearly finished the first Test I realised the series was being played. I was confused you see. ‘Weren't Australia in India only a few months ago?' My brain processed this information and thought it will be a while until India are in Australia. Not so.
You see as a sports fan I like order not chaos. Olympic Games are held every four years. The first I really remember was 1976 where Cuba's Alberto Juantorena opened his legs and showed his class, as David Coleman famously put it. 1980 was all about USA boycotts over Russians invading Afghanistan. How times have changed? The games were saved by the intense rivalry of Coe and Ovett. In 1984 Daley Thompson whistled his way through the National anthem and then 1988 we witnessed another great rivalry between Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis. Ben Johnson produced the most electrifying 10 seconds of sporting action I have ever witnessed in any sport. Actually it was 9.79 seconds of electrifying action. However he had enough steroids in his system you probably would have been electrocuted if you patted him on the back!
In between the Olympics you had football World Cups 1978, 1982 etc. Slotted between those Ryder Cup matches until the Yanks got cold feet and knocked them out of sync'.
The point I am making is that there was order in my life. If you say to me 1976 I will say West Indies tour England and the Olympic games. Say 1980 you get the same response, likewise 1984, 1988 and so on. In World Cup years it was New Zealand, touring in 1978, 1986 and 1990 and 1994 only confusing me slightly by touring in 1983 instead of 1982. The Aussies were here on Ryder Cup years. Indeed all teams toured England on a reasonably regular basis usually every 4 years. So because you could anticipate who was coming to England, you could therefore look forward to the match ups, the key battles between the big players. Now the cricket schedules are a mess. The ICC may know who is going where and when but the average cricket fan hasn't got a clue.
Top International cricketers are complaining about burn out but it isn't the level of cricket that is played that is affecting them but the constant travel, the time away from family and the spurious nature of most of the contests. This has huge implications for Ireland. The argument goes along the lines that International sides schedules are already full. Playing fixtures against Associate nations is unattractive and uncompetitive in an already packed cricketing calendar.
However much merit this argument has in the short term it just doesn't cut the mustard in the long term. Firstly the packed schedules are just greed from the money men and have no real merit from a sporting point of view. What I mean by that is teams should play each other on a regular basis to produce a reasonable assessment of its standing and fair comparisons made of the standards achieved. In other words, a league. In soccer terms Man Utd v Liverpool may be the most lucrative fixture but only in the context of a season playing Derby County, Middlesborough, Fulham and so on. In cricketing terms England, Australia, India and South Africa are only big matches due to how they relate to West Indies, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan matches. Because there is no structure many of the matches have no purpose, no relevance and crucially for the average sports fan, no interest. England versus West Indies might have been attractive 10 or 15 years ago but as a competitive fixture it doesn't excite the neutral any more. England, who last year hosted a home series (four Tests, three ODIs and two Twenty20 matches) against West Indies, which was not even required by the Future Tour Program, took their tally of games against the second-weakest team currently playing Test cricket to 17 since the turn of the millennium. The money men still think that the strong Caribbean influence in UK society makes this an attractive fixture. Yet England has now won 13 matches without reply. During that time England have hardly played the much tougher New Zealanders. So what have got coming up in the schedules? Yes you've guessed it, 6 Tests in a row plus all the usual one-dayers, home AND away with New Zealand. That would ‘test' any fans enthusiasm.
The bottom line is that the ICC needs to step in and take a certain amount of control over the schedules to ensure variety for the fans. Secondly they must insist on certain amount of rest time for all International teams to ensure the fans see the greatest cricketers plying their trade eg Shane Bond, Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Flintoff to name just three out with various stress-related injuries. Thirdly they must widen the base to ensure new International teams bring a new dynamic to the cricket scene so that the same old faces aren't playing each other on a regular basis. And finally they must ensure the integrity of Test Match Cricket is maintained.
They could do all that by reducing the duration of a Test match to 4 days and keeping a fifth day only if a complete day is washed out. This would free up a lot of days for the players to recover and incorporate gate receipts into 4 good days of full houses rather than last two days of half empty grounds. The other thing they could do would be to split the Test teams into 2 leagues and bring in the top Associates into the second tier. The current Test teams that would go into the second tier would be invited to play a certain amount of fixtures against the top teams but otherwise would be competing on a home and away Test Series against the rest. This would be done on a 5 year cycle with the top Test team in the second tier being promoted to the top tier and the worst team being relegated. I would leave One Day International cricket unchanged. Effectively you would have then two tiers of Test match averages with only level 1 counting as Test Match standard and level 2 as First Class. The make up of the Divisions would be as follows:
Division 1 England, Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, South Africa
Division 2 West Indies, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ireland, Scotland, Holland
There would be room to play 4 match Test Series matches with all the teams in Division 1 with a couple of 3 matches Series each against the West Indies and Bangladesh who are the main losers. However this way ensures the teams' only progress up when they prove they are the best in the Second Division and teams go down when they are bottom of the First Division. Thus the matches are competitive and have a relevance that even I can understand.