So the World Test Championship is pencilled into the future cricket itinerary.
Only pencilled in, mind you. It might happen in 2019 – or it might not. It might take place in England – or it might not.
It might involve just four countries or... well, you get the drift.
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It remains a possibility. An idea.
And, in truth, a ropy idea. As ideas go, it’s on a parallel with the net system (deployed in some matches in 1900 whereby a net was strung around the boundary and three runs were awarded for any hit over it), the 1912 Triangular Tournament and the Tiflex ball.
It probably won’t happen. But if it doesn’t, it won’t be for the want of trying from cricket’s governing bodies.
In thrall to TV, they continue to stuff international cricket into every conceivable space in the calendar. An international cricket match used to be an event. Now it can be that, but many just pass by – forgotten in hours.
It will be interesting to see how the ultimate “event” cricket, the Ashes, fares under the pressure of back-to-back series later this year. The series in England will attract big crowds and huge interest, but it will need to be exciting and reasonably close to sustain such interest when the teams almost immediately reconvene Down Under.
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Australians are not noted for sticking by losers. If England win handsomely this summer, the greed-driven concept of back-to-back Ashes could come unstuck.
But while it is a shame that international cricket is being stretched to saturation point, the biggest shame of all is its rising interference with county cricket.
This obsession with international cricket has big dangers for the domestic game. And while that is all very well for countries whose domestic structures are low-key and moderately-attended, in England, county cricket has always been the lifeblood of the sport.
It is bigger, broader, busier and more important to its followers than any other domestic cricket structure. It has long given enormous pleasure and produced excellent cricketers and continues to do so despite the escalating erosion by England and “England Lions”. But can it continue to take the erosion?
Many counties suffer but, inevitably, the better ones are hardest hit. And this season, international calls have undermined Warwickshire’s aspirations to retain the championship.
A big factor behind the Bears’ mediocre start is that they did not play well enough, particularly as a batting unit. As captain Jim Troughton put it: “Every player has shown glimpses of form but glimpses are not what we need. We need consistency.”
Injuries also stuck in their unwelcome oar. But then there are those England calls. It is one thing to lose players for Tests. Warwickshire are used to life without Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott for that reason, just as they were to being without Dennis Amiss and Bob Willis.
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But in the latter pair’s day, the Test itinerary was sensible. And also, in those days there was neither a welter of one-day-internationals to clutter up the summer nor the “Lions”.
At various points this season the Bears have been deprived of, as well as Bell and Trott, Chris Woakes, Chris Wright, Varun Chopra and Boyd Rankin. The last three on that list all missed the crucial championship game against Middlesex to play for the “Lions” against New Zealand at Leicester.
If you want to give touring teams hard practice, why not proper tour matches against full-strength counties? That worked well (and filled grounds) for years.
Most laughably, last week, Rankin, having spent months getting fit following injury and then playing for Warwickshire for a couple of weeks, was called away for the back end of England’s ODI series against the Kiwis – then didn’t play.
He missed a 40-over game at Worcester and the first half of a four-dayer at Guildford with his county to spend time acquainting himself with the England balconies at The Rose Bowl and Trent Bridge.
Surrey’s Jade Dernbach was similarly released at Guildford. The England camp, obsessed with “preparation”, deemed that satisfactory preparation for Dernbach was waking up in Nottingham not knowing which match he would play in, slogging through a two-hour drive, including that nice M25, and a bit of tossing a medicine-ball about before going out after tea to take the new ball.
The counties don’t complain – at least publicly. There are financial rewards for having players in the England set-up. But spectators at county cricket (invariably the last people to be taken into account) have every right to complain.
The Bears have been hammered this year. Other teams have suffered and will suffer. The way the England set-up messes about with the county game is ridiculous, with coaches and captains not knowing who they have available and some players allowed to parachute into matches and others not.
Is there another professional sport in which teams change after the event has begun? It’s a farrago – and an insult and an impediment to a county circuit on which the ECB would do well to remember that a successful England team still heavily depends.
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