Mills calls for changes to ‘messy’ schedule

Cricket’s international schedule is a mess, with windows for Twenty20 franchise leagues desperately required.

That’s the view of Kiwi Heath Mills, who is executive chair of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Association and chief executive of the NZ Cricket Players’ Association.

World cricket’s respective board chairs are attending a three-day International Cricket Council (ICC) meeting in Dubai this weekend. International cricket’s “confusing” World Test Championship and messy schedule needed addressing, Mills said.

“The fundamental problem is the schedule and the unwillingness of all the boards to come together and to agree on a centrally run schedule that makes sense to everyone.

“Ultimately if they want to enhance test cricket, we need to have an annual Test Championship that makes sense to the fan and the followers of the sport, and even to a lot of the participants, where there’s a balanced programme.”

Mills called for dedicated T20 franchise league windows in the yearly international schedule.

Doing so would solve some of the problems around players choosing to play in lucrative T20 leagues rather than represent their country.

To make that happen the respective international cricket boards needed to hand control of the bilateral programme to an independent party like the ICC, he said.

That meant some boards would not be able to play certain series, and sometimes historic series, as they have at set times.

Everyone would need to compromise to produce a collective system which worked.

“All this comes back to the schedule. There could be an international playing schedule that had windows for T20, or clear windows for international and test cricket.

“As long as the boards insist on doing their own thing and negotiating all these series independently of each other we’ll have this mess.”

Mills pointed to the 2021-23 version of the World Test Championship, which saw England play 22 matches over the span, compared with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, which played 12.

While the standings were ordered by percentage of points won, rather than overall points, it was still fiddly as not every team played the same opponent. Some test series were played over one or two matches, and others five.

“No-one I speak to can follow how the Test Championship works. Boards need to put their hands up and address it.”

Mills was encouraged to see discussions happening around how the test game could be improved, but was unsure where the money would come from.