ACS: A proposal for a World Cup of Test Cricket (Mar94)

A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OF CRICKET

Test Cricket needs a World Championship. For several years, this fact has been apparent, but it is now clearer than ever without a World Championship, Test Cricket will die out. The World Cup (of one day cricket) has had a far reaching effect on all cricketing nations. It has brought coloured clothing to English county cricket, and apathy to Test series around the world. Test series are no longer the highlight of other countries' summers, and only England still manage capacity crowds and a profit from the five day game. Most other cricket boards lose a great deal of money through staging Tests, and this will not be tolerated for long.

Test matches need to recapture the drama and excitement of days past. There is still no substitute for a good close Test, building to a climax over a long period of time. This was proved at Lord's, Adelaide and Colombo during the last twelve months, but all too often stale draws on benign pitches keep crowds away, not awake. Test matches need an extra ingredient to spice them up again; a World Championship. Test series have always been played on a friendly basis, with little at stake, and even now prize money is nominal, and dependent on sponsorship. Usually, little more than national pride is at stake. A World Championship would add importance to every Test match, and provide the five-day game with a focus and a purpose.

The main reason for the lack of a Championship before now is the sheer logistical difficulty of organising one. Consider the possible formats. A tournament run on the same basis as the World Cup, with each country playing everyone else, would take far too long to complete. Even if run on a knockout basis, the competition would be very lengthy. Some analysts have compiled league tables, based on Test results, to try and confirm or dispel the various opinions of who are World Champions, but they have rarely reflected accurately the strength of the nations concerned, because of the variety of opposition faced. West Indies and Sri Lanka are yet to meet, an example of the imbalance of the Test fixture list, and the irregularity with which teams meet. This will always be the case because of the economics involved.

England will always host Australia and West Indies more frequently than India and New Zealand, because they are more profitable. In compiling a World Championship table, we must consider this rather than hope for it to change. A World Championship table should be produced and promoted, without the need to alter the existing programme of matches more than is necessary.

Surely the fairest way of compiling a league is for everyone to play each other home and away. For the reasons already mentioned, this is not going to happen regularly, and series will be of different duration, so the result of the most recent series between each pair of countries should be used, rather than individual matches. A grid can be drawn up to show the results of Test series, with home teams on the left and away teams on the top. The results of the most recent series between all countries are entered in the appropriate box. The current table would look like this.

Eng Aus WI NZ Ind Pak Eng --- A(89) D(91) E(90) E(90) P(92) Aus A(91) --- W(93) D(89) A(92) A(90) WI W(90) W(91) --- W(85) W(89) W(93) NZ E(92) D(93) D(87) --- N(90) P(93) Ind I(93) D(86) D(87) I(88) --- P(87) Pak P(87) P(88) D(90) P(90) D(89) ---

D = drawn series, date shown in brackets.

New countries would not be included until they have played everybody, home and away. Sri Lanka therefore need to play West Indies to take their place, while South Africa and Zimbabwe will not appear for some time. Making an effort to play everybody is the only concession the cricket boards will have to make in arranging Test matches.

Even then, it need only be a single Test match, or a series of six, whichever they prefer.

A league table can be produced from the grid, and this should be kept as simple as possible. Making no appologies for using the World Championship as a marketing tool, everybody should be able to understand it, and therefore it should be based simply on the number of series won (in the grid of most recent home and away series against each country), and in the event of a tie, the fewest series lost, avoiding any points calculations. The present table would be as follows:

W L D 1 West Indies 6 0 4 2 Pakistan 6 2 2 3 Australia 4 3 3 4 England 3 6 1 5 India 2 5 3 6 New Zealand 1 6 3

Each time two countries meet, the result of the previous correspond- ing series is replaced by the more recent one, and the table recalculated. This gives a "rolling" Championship table, forever changing with each new result, continuously updating itself. For example, if England beat Australia this summer, their position will improve as they gaina victory, while Australia lose one, the most recent result replacing that of 1989, which Australia won. If the series was drawn, England's position would improve less, while if Australia won, the table would be unchanged, as this would merely confirm Australia's superiority of last time. They would not gain anything more by beating England again.

To test this system, the grid was reproduced at a point in the past, and the table updated from that point to the present day. Strangely enough, the first point (apart from the earliest Test era of just three times) at which all Test nations has played each other home and away was not until 1974, the first time that New Zealand had played Tests in Australia. Using the most recent results before that time, the table would have looked like this:

31 January 1974 W L D 1. Australia 7 1 2 2. England 5 3 2 3. India 4 3 3 4. West Indies 3 5 2 5. Pakistan 2 4 4 6. New Zealand 1 6 3

Australia were some way ahead, and with Lillee's peak still to come, remained on top of the table until 11 January 1979, when they were passed by England, who had taken a 3-1 lead with two Tests to play in the Ashes series, and West Indies, who were in the middle of a series in India. England thus improved on their defeat in the single test of 1976-77 and went on to become World Champions when they clinched a series victory against Australia, and India beat West Indies. On 8 February 1979, the table was as follows:

W L D 1. England 6 1 3 2. Australia 5 3 2 3. West Indies 4 2 4 4. Pakistan 3 2 5 5. India 2 6 2 6. New Zealand 0 6 4

England were unfortunate to lose the title at the end of the 1980 summer, when rain washed out the Centenary Test against Australia, the draw replacing England's Jubilee year victory, handing the Chamionship back to Australia. West Indies tied for first with Australia in January 1981, when they won their series with Pakistan, and took sole control of the top spot, when Australia could only draw with India (replacing their previous victory), making West Indies World Champions on 11 February 1981:

W L D 1. West Indies 5 3 2 2. England 4 2 4 3. Australia 4 3 3 4= Pakistan 4 4 2 4= India 4 4 2 6. New Zealand 1 6 3

West Indies remained on top until 1993, a phenomenal spell of dominance highlighted by the period during 1985/6 when they had won 9 of their 10 series. Finally, last January, Pakistan visited New Zealand, close enough to West Indies to take over as World Champions if they won, which they did. The title returned to the Caribbean when West Indies beat Pakistan in April.

Having worked the system through over twenty years of Test results, several advantages and disadvantages become apparent. A Championship table such as this will inject life into otherwise less interesting series. Many times during the experiment, sides would have played each other with the teams respective places at stake. It heightens the pride, whether it is the title, or the wooden spoon, that is played for. Often a team will be able to gain a place in the table by improving their previous performance against the side they face next. Pressure remains on teams to win series, particularly at home, even if they won the last corresponding series. West Indies beat England on the latter's last tour of the Caribbean, but they must do so again, or they will lose ground. This encourages positive attacking play, which is badly needed.

While this system is flexible, allowing countries to play each other as regularly as is viable, and over series as long as possible, it has the disadvantage of ignoring comprehensive wins by several Tests to none, as by West Indies over England in 1988, which would have no greater value than beating Australia narrowly last winter. Losing teams would gain no benefit from winning a Test in a series they lost, like England at Kingston in 1990.

Also, the weather could easily ruin short series, and single Tests could be disproportionately important, such as the Bicentenary Test between England and Australia. Boards, or ICC, could arrange for these to be excluded in certain circumstances. Fot instance, when the Ashes are not at stake, nor should Championship places be. The tables become outdated if teams do not meet often enough. Rest assured however that countries will arrange to play anyone they can improve their record against, in order to rise up the table.

Overall, such a Championship, especially if kep simple for the benefit of supporters, can only add excitement to matches, always offering something to play for, and occasionally making Test cricket a global event. For the record there would have been seven occasions between 1974 and 1993, when two teams would have met to decide which of them was World Champion, the title resting directly on the outcome of the series between the two top contenders. The media constantly build up series into unofficial Championships. How nice it would be to see such publicity heightened by an official, ICC sanctioned league table, which could replace the hype for the much less valid World Cup.

(Thanks : Journal of the Association of Cricket Statisticians)