First ICL, now WCL

From Michael Fernando, United States of America
What's WCL? At the highest level of Cricket, there's no structure. Sure, there is a pseudo Test Championship and there's an ODI ranking, there's player rankings, etc. But, how can these rankings be real when teams don't play each other on a regular basis?

A real championship table needs a structured schedule with every team playing everyone else, at least, twice (home and away) during a pre-determined (1, 2, 3, 4 -year?) championship cycle. What we have now is England and Australia playing a five-Test series, but others playing one-off, two, three or four Test-match series. And, sometimes five tests. How can this be fair to everyone?

Let's face it, cricket is an elitist game and the current structure is elitist! "You are not good enough to play with the big boys so we will just throw you some crumbs to keep you quiet." Who pays for cricket? Ticket sales at the grounds account for a little bit in, say, England and Australia, but when you see Test matches being attended mostly by security and ground staff, you know that the real money is coming from TV contracts.

So, the money comes from advertisers. And, they pass the advertising expenses onto the consumers. So, eventually the middle-class consumers foot the bill for cricket. But, seriously, who attends all five days of a Test match? Certainly not the middle-class consumers. The IPL and the Stanford 20/20 have already shown that more women and children can attend the shortest form; more people watch short, evenly matched games; and, therefore, cricket can attract more advertising money if cricket were to cater the game to the middle-class consumers.

So, how do we find the balance between (a) the need to bring the short game to the consumers (b) the need to keep the games/teams competitive, (c) the need to keep Test cricket at the pinnacle of the game, (d) the need to pay the players a competitive salary, (d) ... In a word: Franchises.

The WCL controls the schedules, the franchise salary caps, the World Cups, and the end of the season Test Championship game between #1 and #2. The schedule must be fixed so that there's Test cricket between all teams, there's enough games of the short forms to attract the fans to the grounds, and attracts the available prime-time TV money. The Bangladeshi players will improve while playing under better captains and coaches, there will be players from Kenya, Ireland, Holland, Italy, Singapore, Malaysia, Bermuda, Canada etc playing in Test matches. Players will earn a good living, thereby attracting skilled kids to the game.

So, what's WCL? The World Cricket League. The time has come!