ICC proposals to reduce number of Tests

World cricket would lose up to 10 Test matches a year under proposals presently before the ICC designed to bring more equitable league structures to the three formats and add more context to the international game

Proposals for a “conference” style split among Test-playing nations would serve to broaden the number of teams playing Test matches while reducing the amount of fixtures played by the likes of England, India and Australia. The conference structure, believed to have been mooted by the ECB chief executive Tom Harrison, was floated as an alternative to first and second divisions, an idea vehemently opposed by the likes of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh for reasons of history and status.

Speaking in Adelaide during the day-night match between Australia and South Africa, the ICC chief executive David Richardson said the CEOs of Full Member boards agreed that the volume of international cricket needed to be reduced while the context of each individual match was increased. Richardson and the ICC chairman Shashank Manohar remain optimistic that the proposals presently in the works are on course to be agreed upon by the time of the ICC Annual Conference in London in June next year.

“I think we’re at a stage now where, come February at least, at the chief executives level we’ll have consensus as to the structures we can implement, particularly in respect to ODIs and T20s,” Richardson said. “There’s not yet consensus about the Tests, but certainly there’s a recognised need that cricket needs context and league structure, we just haven’t agreed at this point in time on the actual structure.

“We want to make sure we’re not playing too much Test cricket, bearing in mind in some countries its not financially viable so we don’t want to overload or play too much unnecessary Test cricket. The current average in total we’re talking about around 45-50 Test matches a year.

“We …

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