Hey everyone, glad to have you back on another episode of the State of Cricket podcast at Cricket Huddle. Today, we tackle the issue of test cricket, a possibly “dying” format that we are wondering about. Should it be made sustainable or should it just be restricted to “the big teams” or “power centers”, if you will? This topic of discussion comes on the heels of a statement by former Australian Hall of Fame, Ian Chappell: “it’s time to restrict Test cricket to the countries with the infrastructure for it.” Let’s find out what the crew has to say about this matter.

It seems that some of the possible series (Australia-West Indies, India-Bangladesh, for example) are a waste of time due to most of these games being foregone conclusions. Teams and players seem to use these games for “stat padding” purposes and the chance for actual competition becomes quite slim, unless it’s the best four or five nations playing each other. A way to combat this might be a promotion-relegation/tier system, as was discussed, where teams are separated into two groups and the best team from the second group could get promoted while the worst team from the first group would be demoted.

My own opinion is this: the only reason that there aren’t more full-member nations in the world is because these Associates don’t play Test cricket. They may yet play international cricket but are only limited to limited-overs cricket (T20 and ODI). Up until 2017, the ICC Intercontinental Cup was a way for Associate nations to play first-class cricket, so that was one way of playing something close to Test cricket. Games would last for a maximum of four days, had anywhere from eight to 14 teams play, started in 2004, and had seven editions. Since no interest was generated since 2017, the tournament has been on hiatus, even though there have been talks to revive it.

If the only reason that more countries can’t be considered Full Members is Test cricket, I believe the requirements to become a Full Member nation needs to be changed if Test cricket is deemed unsustainable. I want to see more Associates become Full Members in the future and, for that to happen, Test cricket must be played. Associate members also need proper opportunities to play four or five-day cricket. Another point is that the ICC World Test Championship was created for a reason (boosting Test cricket), so it would be unfair to shut this down so quickly after creating it. We also talked about selling TV rights for matches, the possibility of four-day Tests, separate central contracts for Tests,  and more.

If you are interested in the rest of the conversation, please check out the links below: