ICC GOES FOR TWO TEST DIVISIONS...
Promotion & relegation! up and one down every two Teams to years! Teams to years! play minimum two-Test series against each other
THE International Cricket Council’s plans to introduce two divisions of Test cricket from 2019 is likely to kill off the longest format of the game in the Caribbean and bankrupt the West Indies Board.
ICC chief executive Dave Richardson unveiled the proposals this week in attempt to add greater “context” to Tests in the face of the growing rise of Twenty20 cricket.
Under the plans, the current 10 Test nations and two Associates, likely to be Ireland and Afghanistan, would be split into divisions of seven and five teams respectively.
That would see the current bottom three ranked sides demoted to second-tier Test status, with West Indies, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe currently holding those positions.
Given the plans are likely to be ratified at an ICC board meeting later this month, there is unlikely to be any change to those positions, especially when eighth-ranked West Indies are 23 points adrift of seventh-placed Sri Lanka.
Promotion and relegation would occur every two years, with the likelihood only one team would go up and one down during that cycle.
Losing lucrative fixtures against India and England, the two biggest earners for the other Test nations, would prove disastrous for the West Indies given the parlous state of the board’s finances and the hegemony of T20 cricket in the Caribbean over any other format.
The WICB were only saved from bankruptcy when India pulled back from a £30million legal action that followed a cancelled tour of their country in 2014 after West Indies’ players flew home because of a contract dispute with their board.
West Indies’ exclusion from next year’s Champions Trophy in England – a result of failing to get into the top eight of the 50-over rankings – has added to the picture that T20 cricket, the format of which they are world champions, is the only cricket that now resonates in the Caribbean.
And, if the ICC’s plans go ahead, the prospect of second-tier Test status for a team who dominated the game throughout the 1970s and 80s is only likely to make the situation worse.
It means next year’s Test tour of England could feasibly be the West Indies’ last, which would be a damning indictment on the failures of the sport’s administrators.