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New Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Sport
- New Indian Express
'Flawed' Test Championship reveals world cricket's underlying problems
Reigning champions Australia face South Africa in the World Test Championship final at Lord's starting Wednesday amid a chorus of criticism over the competition's format. Wisden, cricket's 'bible', was scathing in its assessment, with editor Lawrence Booth writing in this year's edition that the WTC is a "shambles masquerading as a showpiece". Meanwhile, former England captain Michael Atherton said "everyone knows the WTC in its present guise is flawed". One fundamental problem is that political tensions mean India and Pakistan, two of cricket's leading nations, have not played a Test against each other since 2007. The nine-nation WTC is further skewed because the teams are not being required to face each other or to play the same number of matches, unlike most sports leagues. Countries are free to decide how many Tests they would like to play in the two-year qualifying cycle -- something Booth wants doubled to four years, with the top nine in the rankings all playing each other, home and away, over series that last at least three Tests. Positions are calculated on the percentage of available points won by teams. South Africa have played just 12 Tests in the current cycle -- all of them two-match series -- compared to England's 22 -- and have not played either England or Australia. South Africa also sent a third-string side to New Zealand in early 2024, and lost. It kept its best players at home to appear in its domestic T20 competition. That was a financial sign of the times, as is Cricket South Africa not scheduling any home Tests for 2025/26.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
'Flawed' Test Championship reveals world cricket's underlying problems
Reigning champions Australia face South Africa in the World Test Championship final at Lord's starting Wednesday amid a chorus of criticism over the competition's format. Wisden, cricket's 'bible', was scathing in its assessment, with editor Lawrence Booth writing in this year's edition that the WTC is a "shambles masquerading as a showpiece". Advertisement Meanwhile, former England captain Michael Atherton said "everyone knows the WTC in its present guise is flawed". One fundamental problem is that political tensions mean India and Pakistan, two of cricket's leading nations, have not played a Test against each other since 2007. The nine-nation WTC is further skewed because the teams are not being required to face each other or to play the same number of matches, unlike most sports leagues. Countries are free to decide how many Tests they would like to play in the two-year qualifying cycle -- something Booth wants doubled to four years, with the top nine in the rankings all playing each other, home and away, over series that last at least three Tests. Advertisement Positions are calculated on the percentage of available points won by teams. South Africa have played just 12 Tests in the current cycle -- all of them two-match series -- compared to England's 22 -- and have not played either England or Australia. South Africa also sent a third-string side to New Zealand in early 2024, and lost. It kept its best players at home to appear in its domestic T20 competition. That was a financial sign of the times, as is Cricket South Africa not scheduling any home Tests for 2025/26. - 'South Africa didn't beat nobodies' - South Africa reeled off six straight wins to book their place in this year's final, only for former England captain Michael Vaughan to say they had got there "on the back of beating pretty much nobody". Advertisement But Proteas coach Shukri Conrad objected that South Africa had beaten teams who had beaten the 'Big Three' of India, Australia and England. "One of the nobodies we beat won a Test match in Australia -- West Indies beat Australia in a Test match. They are not nobody," insisted Conrad. "New Zealand beat India: three-zip in India. New Zealand is not a nobody. "Sri Lanka won Test matches (against England and New Zealand).I don't buy this thing about us beating nobody." Victory in the final would be a boost to South Africa following years of hurt in ICC white-ball tournaments, with Conrad saying after qualification was secured. "I'm never going to apologise for getting into the final. Advertisement "It's the biggest thing in this team's existence. It's the biggest thing for South African cricket at the moment." One of those involved in devising the points system, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP: "It's difficult to come up with a solution where everyone is happy given the barriers to an 'orthodox' table that exist, such as the India-Pakistan situation. "Commercial considerations will also mean the 'Big Three' will want to play each other in five-Test series." He added this was just as much a choice as England incurring the over-rate penalties that hampered their chances -- they've yet to reach a WTC final despite the first three editions all taking place on home soil -- with skipper Ben Stokes almost disdainful in his assessment of an "utterly confusing" format. Advertisement Yet, New Zealand's win in the inaugural 2021 World Test Championship final was welcomed as a long overdue global triumph for a popular side. Australia's failure to qualify for that match was labelled a "big missed opportunity" by skipper Pat Cummins, who made amends with victory at in an Oval final two years ago. Tthat India were beaten finalists in both the 2021 and 2023 WTC finals indicated there was still a place for the five-day game in world cricket's economic powerhouse, for all T20 events such as the Indian Premier League are the financial driving force. Indeed former India captain and batting star Virat Kohli, speaking after securing his long-awaited first IPL title following Royal Challengers Bengaluru's triumph in last Tuesday's final, said: "If you want to earn respect in world cricket all over, take up Test cricket and give your heart and soul to it." But the awkward question for cricket chiefs is whether the WTC is helping or hindering that aim. jdg/pb
NDTV
7 hours ago
- Sport
- NDTV
'Flawed' Test Championship Reveals World Cricket's Underlying Problems
Reigning champions Australia face South Africa in the World Test Championship final at Lord's starting Wednesday amid a chorus of criticism over the competition's format. Wisden, cricket's 'bible', was scathing in its assessment, with editor Lawrence Booth writing in this year's edition that the WTC is a "shambles masquerading as a showpiece". Meanwhile, former England captain Michael Atherton said "everyone knows the WTC in its present guise is flawed". One fundamental problem is that political tensions mean India and Pakistan, two of cricket's leading nations, have not played a Test against each other since 2007. The nine-nation WTC is further skewed because the teams are not being required to face each other or to play the same number of matches, unlike most sports leagues. Countries are free to decide how many Tests they would like to play in the two-year qualifying cycle -- something Booth wants doubled to four years, with the top nine in the rankings all playing each other, home and away, over series that last at least three Tests. Positions are calculated on the percentage of available points won by teams. South Africa have played just 12 Tests in the current cycle -- all of them two-match series -- compared to England's 22 -- and have not played either England or Australia. South Africa also sent a third-string side to New Zealand in early 2024, and lost. It kept its best players at home to appear in its domestic T20 competition. That was a financial sign of the times, as is Cricket South Africa not scheduling any home Tests for 2025/26. 'South Africa didn't beat nobodies' South Africa reeled off six straight wins to book their place in this year's final, only for former England captain Michael Vaughan to say they had got there "on the back of beating pretty much nobody". But Proteas coach Shukri Conrad objected that South Africa had beaten teams who had beaten the 'Big Three' of India, Australia and England. "One of the nobodies we beat won a Test match in Australia -- West Indies beat Australia in a Test match. They are not nobody," insisted Conrad. "New Zealand beat India: three-zip in India. New Zealand is not a nobody. "Sri Lanka won Test matches (against England and New Zealand).I don't buy this thing about us beating nobody." Victory in the final would be a boost to South Africa following years of hurt in ICC white-ball tournaments, with Conrad saying after qualification was secured. "I'm never going to apologise for getting into the final. "It's the biggest thing in this team's existence. It's the biggest thing for South African cricket at the moment." One of those involved in devising the points system, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP: "It's difficult to come up with a solution where everyone is happy given the barriers to an 'orthodox' table that exist, such as the India-Pakistan situation. "Commercial considerations will also mean the 'Big Three' will want to play each other in five-Test series." He added this was just as much a choice as England incurring the over-rate penalties that hampered their chances -- they've yet to reach a WTC final despite the first three editions all taking place on home soil -- with skipper Ben Stokes almost disdainful in his assessment of an "utterly confusing" format. Yet, New Zealand's win in the inaugural 2021 World Test Championship final was welcomed as a long overdue global triumph for a popular side. Australia's failure to qualify for that match was labelled a "big missed opportunity" by skipper Pat Cummins, who made amends with victory at in an Oval final two years ago. Tthat India were beaten finalists in both the 2021 and 2023 WTC finals indicated there was still a place for the five-day game in world cricket's economic powerhouse, for all T20 events such as the Indian Premier League are the financial driving force. Indeed former India captain and batting star Virat Kohli, speaking after securing his long-awaited first IPL title following Royal Challengers Bengaluru's triumph in last Tuesday's final, said: "If you want to earn respect in world cricket all over, take up Test cricket and give your heart and soul to it." But the awkward question for cricket chiefs is whether the WTC is helping or hindering that aim.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The summer of 2005 without Pietersen? Imagining World Test finals of the past
This, dear reader, is the 1,126th edition of The Spin. For the past 23 years it has been a weekly source of news, views and automated data about the unread message count in the deleted items folder. As such it is hard to find new journalistic frontiers. But, in the face of some molten competition, this week's Spin stands alone as the nerdiest, the most anal, the one grounded furthest from reality. We say this not to boast, only to flag that it may not be for everyone, and that we feel for those unfortunates whose neurological disposition means they have precisely no interest in imagining what a World Test Championship final might have looked like in May 1989. Yep, with South Africa facing Australia in an actual World Test Championship decider next month, we've calculated what the finals would have been had a forward-thinking International Cricket Council introduced the concept in the 20th century. We stuck as closely as possible to the current regulations, which means one-off Tests don't count, each cycle begins with the first Test of an English summer and teams need to reach a certain level of performance before they join the imaginary points table. In the Editor's Notes for this year's Wisden Almanack, Lawrence Booth – AKA Original Spin – described the WTC as 'a shambles masquerading as a showpiece'. If you're reading, Lawrence, we hope you'll agree there's no masquerade here. We went back as far as 1973-75, primarily for two reasons. In our head that's where modern cricket begins, with Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson trying to knock St George off his 'orse in 1974-75. And 50 years of counterfactuals feels like quite enough for now. Many of the findings (!) are as you'd expect. West Indies would have been in every final from 1979 to 1993, Australia from 1997 to 2009. (We'll get to 1995.) England would have made only three: 1979, AKA the Packer Years, 2005 and 2011. And they would have finished bottom twice: not in 1999, when they were unofficially the worst team in the world, but 1981 (back-to-back series against West Indies will do that to you) and 1989. In that cycle England played 18 Tests, winning only one, and even that wouldn't have counted as it was a one-off against Sri Lanka. The 2005 final would have been played at the start of that mind-altering summer, probably without Kevin Pietersen as it was before the astonishing innings at Bristol that made the selectors forget everything they thought they knew. Whatever the result, a WTC final would have subtly altered the context of the epochal Ashes series that followed. Australia became unofficial world champions a decade earlier when they ended West Indies' 15-year unbeaten run in an even more epochal series. Yet the WTC final that year – the same month, in fact, because the series ended at the start of May – would have been between Pakistan and India. The reason was one of the WTC's biggest problems, an unequal schedule. India played only three series, two against a relatively weak Sri Lanka, and three of Pakistan's five series were against Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. West Indies v Australia would have been the final in the two cycles prior to 1995, with the 1991 final taking place almost immediately after an extremely fractious series in the Caribbean that West Indies won 2-1. Imaginary popcorn please! It's no surprise that Australia are the most dominant team overall; they would have appeared in 15 finals from 1975-2025. No other side has reached double figures. The West Indies team of 1983-85, whose cycle included a 3-0 win in India, a 5-0 in England and a 6-1 aggregate evisceration of Australia, are the only team whose percentage of available points (75) was more than double any of the other teams. West Indies' opponents in their decade of dominance would have been India (1981), New Zealand (1987) and Pakistan (1983, 1985, 1989). Imran Khan's side have a strong case for being the most underrated team in cricket history. Their win percentage is too low for them to be among the very best – in the 1987-89 cycle, for example, they drew 11 out of 16 – but they lost only two Test series in an eight-year period and consistently matched the West Indies at a time when most other teams were being smashed to smithereens. The three 1-1 draws played between 1986 and 1990 are the subject of the best cricket book never written. Pakistan's final against West Indies in 1989 is the one that stirred the most excitement in our inner child. A year on from an epic draw in the Caribbean, 18 months before another in Pakistan, except this time a draw wasn't on the table. We spent an hour working out what the teams would have been, specifically whether Pakistan's last pick would have been Shahid Saeed, Ijaz Ahmed, Mudassar Nazar, Saleem Jaffar or Naved Anjum, and what the implications were for the role of utility man Aamer Malik. In the end we went for Mudassar, with a Test debut (only a few months ahead of real life) for the 17-year-old sensation Waqar Younis. The West Indies team picked itself, with an emerging Ian Bishop completing a frightening pace attack. West Indies Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Richie Richardson, Keith Arthurton, Viv Richards (c), Gus Logie, Jeff Dujon (wk), Malcolm Marshall, Curtly Ambrose, Ian Bishop, Courtney Walsh. Pakistan Mudassar Nazar, Ramiz Raja, Shoaib Mohammad, Javed Miandad, Salim Malik, Imran Khan (c), Aamer Malik, Saleem Yousuf (wk), Wasim Akram, Abdul Qadir, Waqar Younis. We stopped short of replaying the game in the garden, at least for now. For those of us on the cricket spectrum, the real fun is in recalling and researching the state of each team and each player when the matches would have been played. Each final becomes a snapshot of a moment in time – in their lives and ours. In the unlikely event that you'd like to see the full list of finals, or the probable XIs for some of the games, email The Spin. The selection of cricket teams needs a new metaphor. The trusty analogy of cabs off the rank, patiently waiting in line for their turn, doesn't reflect a time in which players miss international matches for myriad reasons: franchise leagues, workload management, paternity leave. While this isn't completely new – Sir Ian Botham missed half of England's New Zealand tour in 1991-92 to star in Jack and the Beanstalk at the Bournemouth Pavilion – the idea of a first XI, carved in stone, has never been more distant. These days selection is more of a multi-lane free-for-all: horns blaring, passersby shouting which cab you should get in and why. And there has been a helluva lot of noise in the past week. When England start their Test series against India, Zak Crawley, Ollie Pope and Jacob Bethell will be competing for two places in the top three. A week ago Bethell felt nailed on to play, even if it meant he'd have to open for the first time in his first-class career. But rightly or wrongly, it feels like Crawley and Pope have overtaken him with their centuries against Zimbabwe. Bethell spent the Zimbabwe Test watching on from the sidelines at Royal Challengers Bengaluru. That's not a criticism – for a young batter, two months in a dressing room with Virat Kohli is about as powerful as osmosis gets – but it may be that, in the short term, one bit of bench-warming begets another. The palaver over Ben Stokes's pre-match comments, interpreted as confirmation that Bethell would start against India, may also work in Pope's favour. While the Bazball brains trust can be deceptively ruthless, The Spin's instinct is that most of that comes from Brendon McCullum and Rob Key, and that Stokes – though single-minded – drops long-serving players with a heavier heart. You can't be a miracle of empathy such as Stokes and turn into Michael Corleone when needed. Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion While it feels unlikely that Crawley or Pope will miss the start of the series against India, scoring a century doesn't always guarantee selection for the next Test. Ken Barrington and Geoff Boycott were both dropped for slow scoring in the 1960s. And in consecutive years at the start of the 1980s, the New South Wales batter Dirk Wellham was left out immediately after scoring his maiden centuries in both first-class and Test cricket. It wasn't the outrage it seems: Wellham had been covering for Doug Walters and Greg Chappell respectively, so when they were available he returned to the head of the cab rank. The Spin has been smitten with Bethell since his mythical 10 on Test debut at Christchurch, but even we wouldn't put him in their company. Yet. I walk into this England team and I feel 10ft tall. I'm well backed in county cricket as well, but I feel like England cricket is my happy place – After months of wicketless misery, Shoaib Bashir returned to form with nine wickets in England's win over Zimbabwe. When the Australian legspinner Arthur Mailey gave advice to England's Ian Peebles during the 1930 Ashes tour, he was criticised for helping the opposition by the Australian team manager, William Kelly. 'Spin bowling is an art, Mr Kelly,' said Mailey, 'and art is international.' Wrist-spin and wicketkeeping are among cricket's greatest arts. At the end of the 1990-91 Ashes – the 'fart competing with thunder' series that Australia won 3-0 – Jack Russell and Ian Healy found a quiet corner of a dressing room to talk about their art. Both were less than three years into their Test careers but would become recognised as two of the world's best keepers throughout the 1990s – in Russell's case even when he couldn't get in the England side. In the third Test at Sydney, Russell – standing up to the seamer Gladstone Small – dismissed Dean Jones with a remarkable legside stumping. At this stage most of Healy's work was done standing back to the seamers, but within a year he would keep to Shane Warne for the first time. Their partnership was career-defining for Healy, who enhanced Warne's greatness with his soft-handed brilliance – and occasionally his mouth. In 2015, they reunited for a delightful masterclass on Sky Sports, another reminder that, in cricket, art will always be international. Roland Butcher, Barbados-born England batter of the 1980s, talks to Simon Burnton about being jettisoned as a West Indies selector, the risks of their new cricket structure and his thwarted football dreams. Sir Jimmy Anderson got out of bed in instalments after his return to action with Lancashire. But, as he tells Andy Bull, he can't wait to do it again. Nottinghamshire lead Division One of the County Championship going into the mid-season break. Gary Naylor reviews another cracking round of fixtures. … by writing to To subscribe to The Spin, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
World Test Championship: Prize money doubled for Lord's final
Australia or South Africa stand to win a record £2.7m in next month's World Test Championship final at Lord's after the International Cricket Council more than doubled prize money. The runners-up in the one-off match in north London on 11-15 June will bank £1.6m, which is more than the £1.2m the winners of the first two editions received. The move is an attempt to breathe fresh life into a competition that has been derided as 'a shambles' and faces increasing competition from lucrative T20 leagues. 'We have witnessed a very interesting third cycle of the ICC World Test Championship, where the finalists were decided only towards the end of the competition,' said ICC chair Jay Shah. 'The championship has showcased remarkable performances from players of different teams, culminating in a final between these two exceptional squads – a true celebration of cricket. 'I am sure spectators at Lord's, along with fans tuning in from all over the world, will be treated to some top-class cricket in this revered format when Australia and South Africa take the field less than a month from now. 'On behalf of the ICC, I extend best wishes to the players of both teams in their preparations for the prestigious match.' South Africa finished their campaign strongly to claim a place in the Lord's final against defending champions Australia, whose defeat of India in January ended the favourites' hopes. India will still receive £1.1m for finishing third in the table, with England picking up £720,000 for their fifth place. Bottom team Pakistan will bank £360,000. The World Test Championship, which operates on a two-year cycle, was created to elevate the five-day format but has received a mixed response. Influential publication Wisden lambasted the competition last month, with editor Lawrence Booth calling it 'a shambles masquerading as a showpiece'. He added: 'The ICC cannot allow the championship to continue as if designed on the back of a fag packet. 'Double its length to four years, like football and rugby, and ensure the top nine in the rankings all play each other, home and away, over series of at least three Tests.' Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
