Why we need a Test championship series

Change is in the air. The BCCI has a new president, the ECB and Cricket Australia new chairmen. Adelaide is getting ready to host the inaugural day-night Test match, an event that at once feels experimental but also far too long in coming. National teams are evolving too, as Mitchell Johnson (retired) and Ian Bell (dropped) disappear from Test cricket in the space of a few days.

Bell was the last man standing who participated in the 2005 Ashes series, a contest that has come to symbolise all that is great about the five-day game. Two dedicated teams trading blows up and down the United Kingdom, watched by packed crowds and mighty television audiences the UK has not seen since. To all intents and purposes, it was a world championship bout, in which the English challengers won a narrow points decision over a previously dominant Australia. Ten years before, the Australians themselves had won an "unofficial Test championship" in the Caribbean.

The kind of energy seen in that summer has been far too seldom glimpsed in the decade since, as Test cricket has struggled to replicate that sort of passion and competitiveness. Pitches carry some of the blame for this, as they veer from highways to potholed tracks with very little in between. So too can administrators for squeezing in so much cricket as to leave its value shaken and its equity all but extinguished. Australia and England have played four Ashes series since mid-2010; in that time CA's day-night guinea pigs, New Zealand, have played the men in baggy green just once.

Adelaide's floodlit match provides an example of what can happen when the game's custodians have the will to make change. The continued absence of a Test championship from the schedule is an equally striking example of what can go undone and unsaid when they do not.

Recently retired CA chairman Wally Edwards had been a major advocate for greater context to international cricket, to the point that he wants a four-year integrated ODI programme re-badged as "World Cup Cricket". But when I asked him about a workable format for a Test match decider, at the board's AGM last month, all that arose were questions.

"I think that's the biggest problem, if it could be done. But how do you have a championship in Test cricket? How do you run a tournament? Test cricket is run over series, in different conditions in each match, and which team is best in all these different conditions, and that's what Test cricket should be about. You get to it and it's very difficult. Look at the Sheffield Shield final. If you play three Tests you're going to have three draws, because all they want to do is draw the game."

"And where do you play it?" CA chief executive James Sutherland added.

"And yeah, how do you stop them just playing for a five-day draw? You could go on forever," Edwards said.

That sort of attitude has always been the major roadblock to a championship. During its more independent-minded phase, the ICC tried twice to bring one in, and went as far as announcing and launching the event two years ago. England was to host in 2017, India in 2021. As the ICC chief executive, David Richardson, put it: "Now that the World Test Championship has been confirmed, we'll work on the playing conditions and qualification criteria." If management hoped to get things working by setting a deadline, they were to be sadly mistaken. The Big Three took care of that.

So instead of a Test championship, cricket retains a lucrative but redundant-looking 50-over Champions Trophy, particularly now that the World Cup itself is to be the playground of only two more teams. It also has a "Test cricket fund", devised to subsidise the game's poorer nations whenever they host Test series of apparently dubious commercial value. The lack of context that devalues the game is thus being treated with a band-aid, rather than anything more substantial. Imagination seems to be in awfully short supply.

Meanwhile South Africa, the world's No. 1 team, wrestles with a lack of public interest in the five-day format. During his Cowdrey Lecture at Lord's, Rod Marsh observed: "They have a magnificent team with arguably the best fast bowler in the world and possibly the best batsman in the world. Yet no one goes to watch them play at home. Come on you guys, get active, there will be a time when your product isn't that good and you'll struggle to exist."

But the fact of the matter is that South Africa's sporting psyche is heavily geared towards being measured by performance at global tournaments. Graeme Smith could lead his team to countless Test series victories and still be referred to as a World Cup loser on home airwaves. AB de Villiers is the game's most outlandish talent, but he is a beaten semi-finalist.

A few months after launching the Test championship and then seeing it being struck down, Richardson declared: "We have the ranking system which is becoming more and more prominent, more and more people are taking note of it, more teams are trying to end the year as No. 1 and earn the financial prize money that goes with that. There's prestige involved in being No. 1 and holding the mace." Clearly he has not been spending enough time in his South African homeland.

Various championship concepts have been floated, by Martin Crowe, and in these pages by Mark Nicholas, to name two. But they have invariably favoured playing the tournament in a format that emphasises one-off contests, when Test match narratives have always been built up over series. A way must be found to embrace the idea of a heightened championship series rather than discarding it.

Why? Because a championship series would actually enrich the game, in a way that no other format can: it would give all Test-playing nations the chance of taking part in a series as prestigious and hyped as an Ashes contest. One of Test cricket's weaknesses right now is that too few teams and players feel like they have something to aim for; the current fraught state of India-Pakistan relations means that England v Australia really is the only head-to-head encounter that excites fans, players and bean counters in equal measure.

A Test championship series between the top two teams should become a priority for the game's decision-makers. A series of at least three matches' duration, hosted by the team that finishes No. 1 at the end of a four- or five-year cycle. The cut-off date for the ranking needs to be carefully considered, but the start of the English season in May makes sense. A May 1 deadline would ensure that the series could be played anywhere in the world before the end of that same year, with the ICC to pay compensation out of the Test match fund to whichever nations are put out by scheduling adjustments.

There are a couple of ways of addressing Edwards' contention about teams playing for draws. First, the pitches for the series would need to be overseen by an independent arbiter working closely with the curators at each venue. His charter would be to ensure a good balance between bat and ball, and also a reasonable replication of the conditions generally prevalent in that country and at that cricket ground.

Secondly, the attraction of the draw needs to be reduced. This could be done by simply declaring that a series resulting in three draws would mean a shared trophy and prize money split evenly, or more pointedly not awarded at all. Give the players the right incentives and they will put on a show worthy of the billing. Broadcasters and sponsors, too, would be far less likely to baulk at a premium version of a package they are familiar with.

Best of all, the prospect of being named world champions at the end of a Test match would give non-Ashes players a feeling of elation similar to lifting the urn. AB de Villiers, World Champion? Virat Kohli, World Champion? They'd like the sound of that. In 20 years' time we could find ourselves reminiscing about the 2025 World Championship like we do the 2005 Ashes series today.