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New structures to reduce international volume
- Updated: October 27, 2016
Less will be more under the structures currently being proposed for the future of international cricket, which would for the first time place limits on how many matches and series could be scheduled by any one nation.
Speaking at the Cricket Australia AGM, which underlined the game’s financial reliance on bilateral tours, the chief executive James Sutherland outlined plans currently under discussion for league structures in ODIs and Twenty20 matches, plus a mooted “conference” format for Test matches.
These structures, Sutherland said, would mean that the game’s financial powerhouses like Australia, India and England would play less international cricket than they presently do, while raising the volume of cricket played by other nations. This would be possible due to the increased context and meaning given to each match by league formats that gave players, fans, broadcasters and sponsors a clear idea why each match was being played.
“If you bring in some structure around international cricket and you create formats that are a league type arrangement you put limits around that, and any other cricket that’s played outside of that is even more meaningless than other cricket that is played at the moment,” Sutherland said. “From that perspective it would put some really significant structure and limits around the amount of cricket that’s played.
“With one day cricket and Twenty20 cricket we are contemplating a 13-team league where everyone plays each other, home and away over a three-match series over the course of a three-year period. That means you play six one day matches away, six at home every year. There doesn’t seem any point playing any more than that because those are the matches that count.
“Similar structure for T20 cricket and I think that’s something that’ll be really beneficial for world cricket. Not just in terms of putting those limits in place, but also creating third party interest, making sure there’s real relevance and context to every single match.”
The limited-overs league structures would mean each nation in the 13-team competition would play each other in one series, either home or away, over three years leading into each World Cup year, with the home team for that series then playing away in the next cycle to follow. Similarly, the conference structure for Tests would grow out of an ICC …
