Some Relevance, Please!

Here’s a thought. There has been a gap of 95 days since the last test was played on March 5, 2014. Although this is a sign of what people want to see and what the administrators want to provide the world, it is important for test cricket to survive and most people who follow cricket would think that. That is something that is obvious and is not going to be the subject matter of this post.

What is probably important and has escaped the eyes of cricketers, cricket enthusiasts and administrators is having a mechanism where all formats co-exist, different cricket enthusiasts get to see the formats that they want to and the shortest form of the game being the most popular format is played for the longest duration in a year. Cricket, for years has tried to emulate football to attract more viewership and has always failed. Maybe, it’s time to think differently and accept the fact that it’ll never be as big as football. Accepting that doesn’t necessarily mean that cricket isn’t doing well, but will create opportunities among cricketing minds to make things better which brings me to my point. Cricket has Test Cricket which is hard to move on from because of all the culture that it brings along with it; there is limited overs cricket which brings all the funds. Hence, emulating Tennis which has 4 Grand Slams which are treated as the most special events and some other events should be the way to go. Every year should only have 3 test events lasting a month where the top 4 teams compete with no bi-lateral test series in between. The rest of the year should be packed with T20s and ODIs.

One game, too many events

The idea of having one limited overs world event every year is just far too many and is just ridiculous. There has been a lot of talk about the champions trophy being successful based on the previous tournament’s turnouts in England, but what everyone fails to realise is that most of the matches in the tournament were reduced to 20-30 over matches because of rain. The final which turned out to be quite a contest was a 20 over match. It just doesn’t make any sense to have one world event every year when there are so many bilateral series going on in between. The international schedule should go ahead with 3 Test events every year, bilateral ODI and T20 series interspersed with 1 ODI and 1 T20 world cup, once every 4 years, both being held in the same year. I believe that this schedule would provide a lot of relevance to the matches played. Re-organizing it to a schedule which has some relevance in terms of rivalry between teams is important for viewers to appreciate the competition and it is high time that this is done now rather than later given how fast things change in these times.