Apex body moots world championship of Test cricket

By end 1997, the International Cricket Council hopes to put in place a formal world championship system for Test-playing nations.

ICC chief executive Dave Richards, at a news conference at the Wanderers' ground in Johannesburg, South Africa on Friday said that when the ICC holds its next meeting in Kuala Lumpur on March 23, he would be seeking assurances from all nine Test nations that a formal world championship has their backing.

``If the approval is unanimous, then it is merely a matter of ensuring that all countries play each other, at home and away, over a period of four years," Richards pointed out. The system, as envisaged, is built around the concept of all nine Test-playing countries playing each other in course of every four year cycle, so that at the end of that period the table of success and loss can throw up a winner.

Mathew Engel, editor of the cricketing bible, Wisden, had suggested earlier that in such a system of home and away Test tours, a team winning a series would get two points, there would be one point for a draw, and no points for losing a series. Thus, in course of a four year span, a team could score a maximum of 32 points, by winning all its tours home and away. In the event, the team coming highest to that ideal tally will be declared the world champions, that title to be held till the completion of the next four year cycle. "That seems about the best bet for now," Richards said.

The ICC initiative owes to two factors: one is the perceived need to re-affirm the importance of Test cricket, and to help it recapture some of the lustre it has lost in recent times due to the proliferation of one-day cricket; and the other reason is that increasingly, international skippers such as Mark Taylor of Australia, Hansie Cronje of South Africa and Courtney Walsh of the West Indies have expressed concern about the hectic playing schedules of recent years.