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[RoyalParkReds]

There is a lot of of talk these days about the future of cricket. This forum included. Participation in the sport at a club level is in decline and if you exclude the Ashes, people don't seem to care as much as they previously did.

I watched a very interesting documentary about the politics of cricket. I'll link it below. It doesn't paint a positive picture for the future of test cricket, especially amongst the smaller nations. Basically, India Australia and England will be the biggest economic winners from cricket. Many other nations only getting a fraction compared. With this occuring and 20/20 cricket and India in general not seeing test cricket as something to strive for, what will test cricket in the future look like ? Will we have only 4 or 5 countries that play tests matches in the future ?
Ideally, to make test cricket's future more healthy, I would do the following....

1. Have a greater proportion of the revenue going to smaller/growing nations to develop the game.
2. Make viewing the game more accessible to the public. ( Both in the big countries and smaller ones)
3. Scrap 2 and 3 test series. They are seen more as a training to the 'real thing'. Teams should tour each other with 5 tests thus creating rivalry and creating a sense of purpose for the series. Allow weaker nations to also cash in with more broadcast and advertisement money.
4. Players should not be given leave to not play tests for their countries so they can go play 20/20 elsewhere. This effects the weaker teams disproportionately.

Politically, I have no idea how to implement this at all.

Here is a link to the documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbnbTancbEY
Well worth a watch.


Any discussion about the future of the sport is welcome.

[Aussie In England]

India creates around 80% of crickets global revenue, why on earth would they want to hand that over to the smaller nations?

[Neon Cricket]

I'd agree on the scrapping of 2/3 test series, like you say it doesn't create the same level of competitiveness IMO

Very hard to start proportioning money around other countries though, if anything the money needs to be ploughed into county/minor county/premier league cricket in order to produce a better county set up.

[RoyalParkReds]

India creates around 80% of crickets global revenue, why on earth would they want to hand that over to the smaller nations?

If they want to continue to play test cricket against other nations they would. Unfortunately, money interests within India view domestic 20/20 as more profitable.

[northernboy1987]

I think they've got to start letting other countries compete at test level, are Ireland/Afghanistan etc really much worse than Zimbabwe for example? Promote the sport at test level in these countries, if you only allow them to play T20/ODI their fans will only want to watch T20 and ODI. Look how well Bangladesh have come on over the past few years at all formats, I'm not saying that all of a sudden UAE will win a test series in Australia but it would be a great advertisement for the game and would allow the bigger countries to blood new talent/rest senior players.

[Aussie In England]

If they want to continue to play test cricket against other nations they would. Unfortunately, money interests within India view domestic 20/20 as more profitable.

Why should it be india's responsibility to fund the lesser nations?

In football Real Madrid and Manchester United create the most profit, that doesn't mean they distribute this to the lesser teams does it?

[Aussie In England]

I think they've got to start letting other countries compete at test level, are Ireland/Afghanistan etc really much worse than Zimbabwe for example? Promote the sport at test level in these countries, if you only allow them to play T20/ODI their fans will only want to watch T20 and ODI. Look how well Bangladesh have come on over the past few years at all formats, I'm not saying that all of a sudden UAE will win a test series in Australia but it would be a great advertisement for the game and would allow the bigger countries to blood new talent/rest senior players.

It's not proper Test cricket if you are 'resting' your top players against the lesser sides. A Test cap is very special. It would become devalued if lesser players where getting undeserved caps.

[RoyalParkReds]

Why should it be india's responsibility to fund the lesser nations?

In football Real Madrid and Manchester United create the most profit, that doesn't mean they distribute this to the lesser teams does it?

Not just India, but just Australia and England.

The difference between football and cricket is football's popularity is increasing world wide while cricket's is diminishing. Also, football is set up for money to have a huge hand in how good a club will be. There is an international market of players and the richest clubs from around the world compete for them. Cricket can't possibly be administered like that and keep the essence of the game in tact.

Also, the problem with the football structure is only a few teams from each country have a realistic chance of ever winning. 4 or 5 teams in the English premier league ? 1 basically maybe 2 in Germany.... 2  in Spain etc. If cricket is run like this you will end up with only a few test playing nations. But cricket wont survive like that.... football can still have this structure and have competitions like the UEFA cup, world cup and European champions league because they have a whole world to play with.

This would only work for cricket if we found 10 parallel universes and India, Australia and England could play against their India Australia and England.

[northernboy1987]

It's not proper Test cricket if you are 'resting' your top players against the lesser sides. A Test cap is very special. It would become devalued if lesser players where getting undeserved caps.

To be fair, you seem to think that all of England's current players aren't worthy of Test status anyways so would it be a big deal to rest Ian Bell to bring in James Taylor for example?

[arsenal123]

Why should it be india's responsibility to fund the lesser nations?

In football Real Madrid and Manchester United create the most profit, that doesn't mean they distribute this to the lesser teams does it?

But they do.

Have a look at Premier League football TV rights money which is distributed relatively equally.  Man U vs Arsenal would draw a bigger audience than Leicester vs Sunderland but all clubs get broadly similar amounts.  The big clubs then get a bit more from their own merchandising, ticket sales, champs league etc...

In Spain traditionally Real Madrid and Barcelona sold their own rights individually to TV.  This had led to a scewed market with relatively little interest in the Spanish league aside from the two main sides.  As a result Spanish teams are now doing collective bargaining like the Premier League.

Its not wholesale sharing of money, but it is a gesture to help grow the game.

[RoyalParkReds]

That is very interesting arsenal123, I didn't know that. ( I'm not a massive football follower but do enjoy the premier league)

That is basically how the system works here in Australia for our Australian rules football. The league uses the traditional teams with the bigger supporter base to make more money. This is done by having them play against each other on popular time slots, the main sporting stadiums and having them play on popular days of the year ( e.g public holidays). This generated money is then spread around the league to the less economically successful clubs. We also have a salary cap. It may not be perfect but pretty good over all.

[Cin88]

I'm in favour of giving test status to more countries. Ireland especially deserve test status now rather than in 5 years or whatever rubbish the ICC spouts as an excuse. Maybe give test status to Ireland, another European country, a couple of Middle Eastern/Asian countries, a couple from Africa and one or two from the Americas if there is any (I will admit that i'm rather out of touch with the Associate nations in terms of the strongest teams). Lets face it, there's always a large gulf in ability amongst the test nations, especially when it comes to Bangladesh/Zimbabwe v everyone else so why not get some of the top Associate members in to provide more competitive cricket at the lower end of the rankings? It would also help the poorer countries out by reducing their travel costs, and help their fans out as they're not having to go half way around the world for an away match.

[smilley792]

Two tier test system with more nations?

Top tier 7 teams(5day test matches)
Bottom tier 7 teams(4day test matches)

Over a 2 year period every team plays 6x 5 match test series

Every 2 years rankings used to promote and demote 1 or 2 nations.

[edge]

I've never understood the idea of 'test status'. Monaco are bloody awful at football, that doesn't mean they're only allowed to play 5 a side does it! Obviously it would be daft to have a Papua New Guinea vs South Africa 5 test series, but just because a country plays tests doesn't mean they have to play every other country that plays tests. It's not like anyone decent ever plays tests against Zimbabwe at the moment anyway! Can't expect a sport to grow if you don't let anyone new play it, that's bloody obvious.

- Let anyone who fancies it play test matches, immediately you solve all the negative 'elitist/barely anyone plays it' criticism.
- Get t20 in the olympics. Don't care if England have to play a test or two less once every 4 years or whatever else, get the fastest growing and most 'exciting' form of the game out there and encourage new countries to play it. Olympic status will automatically mean funding boosts for all the current associate nations from their home olympic boards, that's not going to hurt either. Also suddenly the USA and China will sit up and take notice.
- Sort the competitions out, other than the Ashes test cricket is effectively a boatload of friendly games. Cricket fans don't care, everyone else thinks it's stupid. World Test Championship please, and let everyone have a crack at it. If the new German side fails badly, never mind - losing is part of sport. Maybe they'll decide they want to work harder and grow their game for the next time, and maybe a chance to have a crack at the big sides after they work their way up would be an effective carrot.
- Same with ODIs, 7 match random series are stupid. Sort it out and make everyone qualify for the WC by using points from bilateral series and make sure the smaller sides get games regularly.

[tim2000s]

Why is there such thing as test status? Because very few teams could bat for long enough to make a game last. Bear in mind test status used to mean unlimited time. Now it would seem that you can add all the current test teams to that list that can't bat to make a game survive five days...


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