Posted by The Test Championship that never really existed anyway is to be officially given the arse by the end of the month. It’s said that the ICC will instead look to enhance the standing and significance of Test cricket by increasing the financial incentives on offer for topping the rankings.
They did the same thing last year. South Africa got somewhere around £275,000 for topping the rankings in April and will get summat similar for staying there for a year. Maybe they’ll get £300,000 if they’re still top in April 2015.
These are trivial sums in a world in which Glenn Maxwell gets more than that to polish his arse on the Mumbai Indians bench for just over a month. Increasing the incentive is like a company trying to retain a member of staff by offering them free tea and coffee when a rival firm’s already promised to double their salary. All you’re really doing is advertising the vast discrepancy.
You’ve been reading Graeme Swann’s Twitter feeds for too long, KC.
Three paragraphs, two gratuitous (and quite different) arse analogies.
Anyway, this change will make no difference to England – at the rate we are going we’ll soon be bottom of the test rankings…
…what a bummer.
We won a match?
When does the Ashes start?
Shortly after we finish celebrating our World Cup win.
Anyway, why doesn’t these ICC give extra cash to struggling test nations, rather than reward the top-ranked (as though anybody needs additional incentive to win cricket matches)? A bit of a bolshy comment, I know.
A communist! Quick, pelt him with free market tomatoes till he accepts the unworkability of centrally fixed prices.
But the thing is, test cricket is an area where the socialist economic model is absolutely appropriate, because all the test teams require for their own health that all the others are also healthy. So “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is a useful mantra. This is why we have noted socialists like Giles Clarke and Ian McLaurin in such influential positions. Imagine what a mess it would be if we had an investment firm head or the boss of Tesco in charge.
Does ‘ bolshy’ come from ‘Bolshevic’?
Well I never.