Posted by The legitimacy of the World Test Championship was this week dealt a severe blow with Australia’s victory over India in the final. Throughout the civilised world, right-thinking people looked at the result and concluded that the format of the competition should probably be different somehow if this is the kind of thing we’re going to end up with.
We previously scorned the fallacy of fairness when India lost the first World Test Championship final and then-captain Virat Kohli said that in the future the World Test Championship final, “has to be a test of character over three Tests.”
This time around his successor Rohit Sharma was given the opportunity to voice similar sentiments via an in-no-way-leading question.
“In the next cycle, if it is possible, a three-match series would be ideal,” he said. “I would love that.”
SORE LOSER ROHIT WHINGES ABOUT TEST CHAMPIONSHIP was the gist of some of the resultant headlines.
But maybe a three-match final isn’t enough. Maybe Test cricket needs something even bigger.
We hereby propose the World Test Championship Final Premier League. The fixture list for this competition would comprise only World Test Championship finals.
With only one game every four years, it’ll obviously take quite a while to identify a winner. We’d say at least 40 years at a bare minimum and ideally a lot longer as the epic scope would represent an appropriate tribute to the longest format.
At the time of writing, with two games played, India are top on bonus points, followed by New Zealand.
Australia are bottom of the table and are therefore in grave danger of being relegated to white ball cricket.
A the end of each cycle, the winning nation should be awarded something significantly more threatening than the Test mace – a tank, say, or maybe some kind of manmade supervirus bioweapon.
Ashes next. A good time to make sure you’re getting our email.
40 years to find the winner? Well, don’t forget there will have to be a playoff between the top 4 teams, and none of them will be happy to have the winner decided over 1 match, so add on another 20 years to get the finalists and then the final will be played over another series of matches. This could take 100 years.
We could call it The Hundred?
Now this idea has got legs.
What about if all the teams played each other, maybe as many as five times, home and away, over a number of years?
100 years? A trifling duration.
Surely the only sporting contests that REALLY matter are the ones that have been going on regularly for 200 years or more.
The Elton v Harrow cricket match at Lord’s, to provide one example.
The “real” tennis World Championship is pushing towards 300 years.
Eton v Harrow even. People didn’t have this autocorrect problem in 1805.
‘Well I remember when Cook was young, me and Goochy had so much fun…’
It seems to me, Sam, that you live your life, like a stick of rhubarb in Geoffrey Boycott’s Mom’s hands. Never knowing the Duckworth Lewis par score when the rain sets in…
Honestly all our money on Elton in that match. Every last paise.