Tests and T20s the lifeblood of cricket

TEST cricket is the game distilled to its spirit. T20 is what happens when marketing moves cricket to the edge of what its controlling conservatives think is good for it.

Bless them both. They are the extremes and, therefore, the keys to any future cricket might have in a world that is headed away from its comfortable centre and towards the dangerous margins.

The best reason for the flabbiness of one-day cricket to exist between the shining poles of tests and T20s is that it could be the way to the truth and the light for lesser players in lesser teams

The ICC should have scrapped the World Cup and replaced it with the Champions Trophy’s taut format

playing in lesser cricketing countries.

If those players and teams are any good they should be able to muddle through a one-day international (ODI) — which asks for none of the emotional strain of tests and little of the overwrought rush that powers T20s. Once they have mastered that level they will have a foundation to move up.

In fact the spread and establishment of cricket in other countries is the only valid excuse for 100 overs of humdrum. But that has nothing to do with why ODIs are so pervasive, which is because they make money.

If we think like the suits for a moment, as long as one-day cricket remains a viable commodity in the broadcast-rights market, it doesn’t matter how insipid a product it is compared with the far more interesting brands on the shop shelf. It will survive in the same way that instant coffee sells despite the presence in the same aisle of the finest Arabica beans.

That’s why the International Cricket Council (ICC) abandoned their plan to scrap the Champions Trophy in favour of a World Test Championship. The spin before that promise was broken was that cricket would be best served by crowning a world champion in each format, which made some kind of sense.

Now we are back to the lopsidedness of an ODI World Cup and Champions Trophy, a World T20, and nothing except a ranking system for tests.

While there is a modicum of logic in that — test cricket is about series, not tournaments — what the ICC should have done was scrap the World Cup in its current shapelessness and replace it with the Champions Trophy’s taut format. Problem: that would have meant less television money in the coffers. And, for the suits, the coffers matter much more than doing what’s right.

But just as life is too short to drink bad coffee, it is too short to put up with mediocre cricket. So the revolution will soon come and it will be televised. The same market that forces us to put up with just another ODI when it could give us the triumph and tragedy of a test or the thrills of a T20 must see sense.

If it doesn’t, the customers will go away. Stale coffee doesn’t sell.