ICC could mandate four-day Test with its cricket committee set to formally discuss the plan advocated by various full-member boards, who have found life difficult dealing with the ever-saturated cricket calendar, filled with bilateral limited-overs cricket and T20 leagues across the globe, marginalising the beautiful red-ball game.
This will not only free-up substantial time in the FTP schedule from 2023-31 but also make Test matches a slightly more cost-efficient game, played from Thursdays to Sundays with increased number of overs each day, especially considering the financial health of cricket nations outside the "Big 3".
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"It is something that we have got to seriously consider," Cricket Australia CEO Kevin Roberts was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. "It is something that can't be driven by emotion, but it needs to be driven by fact. We need to look at what's the average length of Test matches over the past five-ten years in terms of time and overs."
"We need to look at it very carefully and perhaps it is more likely than not in the mid-term future. What we absolutely will do is that over the next 12 to 18 months, is make sure the cricket calendar is nailed down for the years 2023 to 2031. What we are committed to doing is working with all the ICC members - nobody is saying it is easy but what we are doing is looking at it holistically and we are committed to doing that."
Apart from this week's Boxing Day Tests in Melbourne and Centurion, there have been more than 60% of Test matches which have ended inside four days since the beginning of 2018. "We might not have got a result if we'd done that in the Ashes, I think every game went to a fifth day," Aussie skipper Tim Paine, however, said. Players are expected to be against the four-day Tests, considering the critical differentiator between a first-class game and Test match has been that fifth day. The plan takes that special status away from the latter at this level.
"That's the point of difference with Test cricket, it is five days, it's harder mentally, it's harder physically, and it tests players more than the four-day first-class fixtures do. I think that's what it's designed to do, so I hope it stays that way."
Head of the international players' body FICA, Tony Irish reckons while the idea certainly has a lot of merits from the business point of view, the full-members will still need a "coherent" international game structure for it to be properly successful.
"There are two aspects to four-day Tests, the cricket aspect and the scheduling aspect," Irish said. "It would take pressure off the schedule but our concern would be that the ad hoc way the schedule currently works they would simply plug in more cricket into the gaps. If introduced it, therefore, has to be part of a more coherent structure."
"We would need to understand exactly how the cricket aspects are intended to work and we would need to take that to the players. In the past, many players have been against a change to four days. However if we have a clear picture of how it all works in an improved and well-structured schedule, then it would be something that could be taken to the players for their consideration."
"Unfortunately with the ICC there is a history of introducing these types of changes in an unstructured way and that would need to change. We reckon they need to do a lot of work on how the schedule will look and not just present it as a concept."
(Inputs from ESPNcricinfo)
