Cricket powers may alter tours (13 January 1999)

13 January 1999

Cricket powers may alter tours

The Christchurch Press

New Zealand will be one of the big winners if the International Cricket Council agrees to a regular home-and-away programme of test matches.

While the game's major powers, England, Australia, West Indies, and South Africa, have a regular format in place for their most important series, such as the Ashes, the less significant players -- Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, New Zealand, and Zimbabwe -- tend to have to fit in around the other established and financially successful tours.

But when the council has its annual meeting in June, New Zealand Cricket chief executive Christopher Doig hopes a rotation among all nine test-playing nations will be approved.

Doig has been working for the ICC on a variety of programmes which would enable all countries to have series against each other within a set period of time.

They could include both 41/2 and five-year cycles -- to allow an Ashes series to be fitted in every two years -- and a 10-year rotation, with each country playing all others at least twice in that time.

In the past New Zealand has had its opportunities to play some of the bigger countries limited. For example, New Zealand did not play the West Indies in tests between 1987 and early 1995.

For Zimbabwe, the newest member of the test cricket club, it has been much tougher. Since starting test cricket in 1992, Zimbabwe has not played Australia in a single test.

England, scarcely among the game's on-field powers, is similarly dismissive of the competitive, if limited, Zimbabweans.

Doig believes his fellow chief executives support a rotation programme, provided all the sticking points can be circumvented.

"No question about that. The key players are the powerful countries who have had excellent international programmes," he said.

"It's been tough. There will be some compromises needing to be made by New Zealand, by Sri Lanka, and by Zimbabwe. But we are the primary beneficiaries of a regularised programme so we are prepared to make those compromises."

Tied in with a regular rotation is the prospect of a world test championship.

Two possibilities have been considered by the ICC -- either a tournament format within a two-month period, or the results accumulated over a four or five-year period.

ICC chief executive David Richards acknowledged more research needs to be done to be sure a test world championship is going to benefit the game.

"The view about rotation is that a proper tour programme is necessary," Richards said.

"There is a variance of views between countries as to whether it can be done over a four or five-year cycle."

Richards said test cricket was making a welcome resurgence.

"Crowds here in New Zealand in recent weeks have been excellent, there were two tremendous tests to finish the Ashes series in Australia, and in Pakistan we saw increased crowds for the Australian tour back in September-October. There are a lot of positive things going on with test cricket and that's very encouraging."

Source :: The Christchurch Press (https://www.press.co.nz/)