Mission impossible? Not at all

Jagmohan Dalmiya is quoted as saying that one of his greatest regrets is not being able to organise a World Test Championship during his tenure as ICC President. The scheme has been making the rounds for a long time but remained an elusive phantom, frustrating all designs to bring it to fruition. While I am not aware of the grounds on which it has been stymied in the past, here is a venture to draw up a format under which such an event could be conducted.

Before going into the detail, I would assume that the raison d'etre of a World Test Championship is not under attack. It gives the players greater stakes to play for than a Test or series victory. With ten teams competing for the same pot of gold instead of just two, the cricketing public from across the Test playing spectrum focus their attention on the entire Test calendar rather than just on Test matches involving their own side. And by a transparent system of ratings, all the contenders get to judge precisely where they stand in comparison with the rest.

Now coming to a possible blueprint. A knockout format is ruled out because Test matches do not always terminate inside five days and to have a decision on first innings or some such means is simply abhorrent. With a league system, the possibilities are to stage it at one place and time or in different places over a period of time, ideally lasting one season. Holding it in one concentrated burst in one region, with each team playing the other once, requires all countries to set aside three months of their calendar at a stretch. Perhaps the more congenial, but expensive, alternative is to spread it across the entire season and take it around the world to involve fans from all over.

Here it would be appropriate to point out that a World Test Championship will not replace regular Test match series. The idea is to play it over an entire season but to have it only once every three seasons, so that in the years in between, regular bilateral Test series can proceed unabated. It would not be desirable to hold such series during a Championship season since that would lead to confusion and also discriminate between Tests that are part of and outside the Championship.

Down to the nitty-gritty of the Championship, each team gets to play the other once, i.e. plays nine Tests overall, so there are a total of 45 Tests in the season. Some teams play five matches at home and four away while the others play four matches at home and five away. If England have a home engagement with India in one Championship season, in the next Championship the fixture will be away and so on. So in effect, teams will be touring another country for just a one-off Test (if they want to arrange ODI's too they are welcome) besides two mandatory warmup games before the Test. Since there are 45 Tests, I think there should be nine rounds of matches with each round consisting of five Tests being played simultaneously so that there is some uniformity in the scheduling. If it's staggered, teams that have finished their engagements early are at a disadvantage compared to teams that have a game in hand.

Those would be the logistics and a points system can be worked out by which, in addition to points for an outright victory, batting and bowling points are awarded. There would of course be no final and the team that accumulates the most points at the end of the season is the winner. There are several imponderables about the whole project including the cost, for one, but I'm sure there are sponsors out there eager to foot the bill for such a venture. The TV rights may have to be split up since it's not clear whether the same organisation can cover five Test matches simultaneously. Another question of course is how early such a project can be organised because the scheduling is probably full for the next couple of years. But in the final analysis the task would certainly appear to be less than formidable unlike what we've been led to believe all this while. The ICC should take heart from the motto of the US Armed Forces: 'The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer'.