How Will The ICC’s Latest Test Match Shake-Ups Affect the Blackcaps? (Sigh…)
The ICC’s quest to ‘fix’ Test cricket took a few turns this week, with the draft of the new future tours schedule being leaked out into the public (probably deliberately?) as well as details being confirmed about the first four-day Test – which’ll be played between South Africa and Zimbabwe starting on Boxing Day.
At this point it’s not so hard to guess which side of the fence New Zealand Cricket will place themselves on. If it works out cheaper to host four-day Tests then, buddy, get used to the idea because it’ll soon start happening. The ICC have given permission to all member associations to book four-dayers on a trial basis until the 2019 World Cup so just wait ‘til that 2018-19 schedule comes out.
Faf de Plessis hasn’t been too happy with this development. He’s one of a few world cricket personalities to come out speaking against the four-dayer, preferring the extended drama of the five-day exhibition rather than the first-class format. It’s not that different. You add another half-hour to the day with fifteen minutes extra in the first two sessions and that’ll get you 98 overs in a day instead of 90. The follow-on mark is dropped to 150 and if all the overs get bowled then you’ll only end up 58 overs shy of the usual target.
Of course that’s easier said than done with the scourge of over rates these days. If they really wanna get serious about tightening up cricket’s premier format then perhaps getting fellas to jog between fielding positions after each over might do equally as much as the big-focus gimmicks. However the four-dayer’s not nearly as sacrilegious as it’ll be labelled, just as the day-nighters haven’t ruined the spectacle either – if anything they’ve helped sharpen it in their own pink-balled way. Hey and that SA vs ZIM game in Port Elizabeth? Not only is it a four-dayer but it’s also a day-nighter! Can’t say they’re not trying.
Because South African players can complain about the lack of day five but this isn’t about them – it’s to make it easier to bring teams like Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan into Test cricket. Chances are extremely strong that we’ll never see a four-day Ashes Test or any four-dayers involving India and any team that isn’t one of those three minnows. Zimbabwe against South Africa probably isn’t going into a fifth day anyway so this means they don’t have to pay all the variety of costs that come from keeping that wasted extra day available. It just makes sense.
But, yeah, it’s hard to imagine New Zealand not taking advantage of this, based on their recent actions. The two Tests against the West Indies were each finished within four full days with both games petering out towards their inevitable results. There were 300.2 overs of cricket in the first Test and 310.4 overs in the second. A four-day Test, with 98 overs per day, gives you 392 overs so they could easily have gotten those games in within that time-frame, no dramas. Granted it depends a bit on whether you’re banking on the West Indies coming here and being kinda crap but the Blackcaps have a pretty fine record at home against teams they expect to beat. Also if it’s seen as a bit of shade to offer a travelling team a four-dayer then just watch as we get stuck with them when we travel.
The question to ask yourself is not so much: can you stomach four-day Test cricket in Aotearoa? But more: will this lead to more Test cricket in Aotearoa? Like, we’re in the middle of a summer of cricket which features only four Tests without a winter tour scheduled on either side (nah, but players still need a rest over the ODIs… mate, just be honest and say Kane Williamson doesn’t want to spent Christmas in Christchurch. We’ll all understand). Before the Windies games we hadn’t played a Test since March when South Africa were here. Two Tests against England in March-April conclude the home summer and then they’re not expected to play another Test until they go to the UAE to face Pakistan in October. Which adds up to four Tests in roughly 18 months. England and Aussie are in the middle of five Tests in two months. It’s like… honestly, how… in what… nope. Not gonna go there again.
Anyway, this is all happening in the shadow of that leaked future tours schedule, which has been designed to accommodate the Test Championship and ODI Championship, a schedule that was compromised from the very start. To summarise that drama, India refuses to play against Pakistan so the idea of fair championships are already out the window as teams won’t even get to play everyone else across the cycle. Instead you play six teams out of eight other participants and there’s a final at the end of it. The other three Test teams will still play but outside of the championship and it’s expected that teams will jump over to Ireland when they go to England, Afghanistan when they go to Pakistan/UAE, etc.
The new future tours programme has overlapping windows for Tests, ODIs, T20Is and also an unofficial break for the IPL each year – which is something that neither the BCCI or ICC had really wanted in the past to avoid setting a precedent but apparently they figured something out (nudge nudge, wink wink). 13 ODI teams will take place in the One Day International Champo, Netherlands being the extras. The Test Champ runs every two years while the ODI one goes in two year blocks as well with the reward being World Cup qualification. Everyone plays eight of the other 12 teams.
The idea of the Test Championship isn’t so much about more Tests as it is about better Tests with context behind them. Hence why that was the basis that NZC used when justifying the current summer schedule. The 3/3/2 format of games, the two being the Tests, shapes to be their focus going forward because that’s what the Championships promote. All of this is still in the draft stage and could be changed… but bending to public interest isn’t really in the ICC’s textbook.
41 of the 81 Test series between May 2019 and May 2021 will be two-Test series. So 51% as opposed to 39% last time. Three-Test series drop from 39% to 17%. Nothing we’re not used to in Aotearoa – that West Indies series was supposed to have a third match but nah, never mind about that. 11 of NZ’s 12 series over that span of time will be two-Test series so no surprises there (the other appears to be a one-off Test against Ireland). Oh and all the four or five Test series pencilled in for that time involved India, Australia, England and South Africa.
See, that’s the most frustrating thing about this. In trying to spark this thing up for everyone, including bringing a couple new teams into Test cricket, the ICC couldn’t help but cave in to the financial powerhouses and this new schedule looks suspiciously like it’s only going to expand the gap between the Big Three and the rest, with South Africa clinging on to the trio. India are playing fewer matches over this span than over the previous one but they get more days of cricket at home. They get 37 Tests. England get a massive 46 and Aussie play 40. New Zealand, on the other hand, will play 28 Tests in that four year stretch. There’s room to add more but let’s not get our hopes up. Here comes the obligatory mention that Kane Williamson’s peak years will be spent getting dwarfed by Virat Kohli, Steve Smith and Joe Root purely because of the excessive games they’ll get.
What we’ll also see is a majority of tours featuring only one or two formats of games, rather than the full tours will all three formats. That’s mostly down to the ICC trying to break things up into windows, though if you were hoping to see a shrinking of international T20 then dream on, chief. New Zealand will play 49 of them in the 2019-23 window which is third-most behind India and the West Indies. There will be twice as many T20Is each year under this FTP, including regional World T20 qualifying events.
Meanwhile the only other Test Championship team playing 28 Tests is Pakistan. West Indies and Sri Lanka each play 29. Bangladesh are the only Champo team playing more Tests, everyone else is getting roughly two fewer per year. Speaking of a lack of Tests, New Zealand will play two of them against Australia across those four years because nothing is fair. 24 of India’s 37 Tests are against England, South Africa or Australia.
Those 12 Test series for the kiwis? West Indies, Pakistan, India, South Africa, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka all come to town. Meaning no homers against Aussie or England. Then the away series feature: Australia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, England and Pakistan. No away Tests against South Africa or West Indies. Which means the four teams we play both home and away are, unsurprisingly: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Shout out to India for being so generous, wonder if that new Star Sports x NZ Cricket combo has something to do with that? Maybe we need a Channel Nine deal too because there’s an away ODI series against Australia closer to the 2023 World Cup but the Australians will not be visiting our shores for Tests or ODIs at all during this FTP as things stand – although there’s a window in each cycle for free play.
Yeah, so… that’s what’s going on there. Four years or two-Test series for the Blackcaps, heaps too many T20Is (there’s a disgusting rumour that five-match T20I series might become a thing), limited games against the bigger and more financially dominant teams (looking at you Australia, not good enough) and a big old swing back towards the Big Three model that we only narrowly escaped a few years ago. Stiiiiink.
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