Michael Atherton- Say 'no' to world championship (10 January 1999)

10 January 1999

Michael Atherton- Say 'no' to world championship

By Michael Atherton

THIS week in Christchurch, in what is shaping up to be one of the most important International Cricket Council meetings of recent years, the chairmen of the Test-playing nations will make the mistake of believing a world championship of Test cricket is the best way of giving the longer form of the game a boost in those countries where interest is flagging.

Also on the agenda will be bribery and match-fixing, which have overtaken ball-tampering as the most important issues facing world cricket today.

Chris Doig, a former opera singer, and now chief executive of the New Zealand board, will want the rest to sing to his tune as he presents a paper on the feasibility of a world championship of Test cricket. His proposal will support a world title decided over four years, whereby each nation would play the others in a series of at least two matches, home and away. He is likely to recommend a lucrative play-off between the top teams to decide the ultimate champions.

While England and Australia are in favour of a championship in principle, both will reject Doig's proposals. For his plan to be logistically feasible it would mean an end to the traditional five-match series that England enjoy against Australia, West Indies and South Africa and an end to the Frank Worrell trophy played over a similar distance between Australia and the West Indies.

Both Australia and England will fiercely protect their rights to keep these 'icon' series and will demand that five-Test Ashes series continue every two years as the cornerstone of their respective fixture lists.

England will propose a championship within a five-year period played within each country's own fixture list with play-offs at the end. But before any proposals are agreed, the England and Wales Cricket Board will quite rightly demand that a proper business plan be put in place to protect their own commercial interests. International cricket funds the whole of our game from top to bottom, and it would be irresponsible of the ECB to jeopardise that.

The traditional voting patterns within the ICC are likely to continue: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe will endorse the proposal, with England, Australia, West Indies and South Africa opposing. The push to include Bangladesh as a full member nation would strengthen the Asian bloc's hand in the future. It is clear, then, that if a world championship does come about, it will be a compromised form to appease those nations that want to keep their fixture lists as they are.

Call me a stick-in-the-mud if you will, but I have yet to be convinced of the need for a world championship. For sure Test cricket lacks the focus that the World Cup brings to one-day cricket. Wisden have attempted to bring some focus by producing a Test table, but such is the haphazard nature of the fixture lists, their conclusions are clearly nonsensical. Until recently, for example, India were second, having won only one Test away from home in 10 years.

Only by having the tournament over a short and defined period of time - two years, say - with the fixtures standardised could such a notion of world champions mean anything at all. Logistically this is impossible and, as I have said, there is no way it would be voted for.

A championship over a longer period of time or a continuously rolling championship with no time definition would mean nothing at all and would scarcely fire the public's imagination - or that of the players; how many of the England team from 1993 are still playing in 1998?

Administrators are really barking up the wrong tree. The key to reviving interest in Test cricket is to make sure it is as good a product as possible to watch.

During the recent Sydney Test match more than 140,000 people watched the four days. There was no world championship at stake and the Ashes were dead, yet both teams were intent on scoring at a decent lick and trying to get wickets rather than containing, and so the product was attractive. In such circumstances Test cricket really is alive and well. Where it is not then administrators need to ask why.

Also on the agenda are the problems concerning bribery, betting and match-fixing. Perhaps because there have been no high-profile cases involving English players we do not realise the scale of the potential problem.

On the sub-continent it has been reported that Salim Malik and Pakistan captain Wasim Akram could face criminal charges, and the recent scandal involving two of Australia's highest-profile players taking money from a bookmaker in exchange for match information shows it is not confined to that part of the world. The credibility of international cricket is at stake and the ICC, not known for their strength of purpose, must act decisively.

Clearly the ICC were as culpable as the Australian Cricket Board in their handling of the Mark Waugh and Shane Warne affair. While there is no indication that the players themselves did anything fundamentally wrong - there is a distinction between being paid for information and match-fixing - the lack of openness from the administrators of the time was damning.

The ICC will demand future openness from countries' governing bodies, and while accepting that each country has a fundamental right to discipline its own players, it is likely they will set up an independent committee to review any potential cases and ratify or review the punishment.

But they must go further than that. They must be prepared to take the strongest possible stance against any cricketer found guilty of bribery and/or match-fixing. By that I mean a life ban.

There are many other topics up for review: The cricket committee will review the problem of bowlers with suspect actions and discuss the Jamaican fiasco of the abandoned Test match. The general deterioration of pitches ought to be on the agenda, as should the continuing problems surrounding the third umpire - either do it properly by placing four cameras in line with the stumps or they should not do it at all.

That is, when all is said and done, a job for the administrators not television companies.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)