Former England Test batter Mark Butcher feels the ICC might have focussed on different related points to safe the way forward for Test cricket as a substitute of introducing the WTC. File
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Former England Test batter Mark Butcher feels the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) has carried out extra hurt than good to the longest format.
South Africa lately named a depleted squad for the Test sequence in New Zealand with their high cricketers contracted to play within the second season of the SA20 because the dates of the 2 occasions are clashing.
“One of the things that’s made this even more inevitable is something that they’ve done to try to salvage Test match cricket, which is the World Test Championship,” Butcher mentioned on the Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast.
“The point is that your bilateral series have to capture the imagination of the fans and the players of the two countries that are playing in it, and then the wider cricket-watching public. And the only way they are that is if they are competitive. And that’s how it always was.”
Former Australia skipper Steve Waugh additionally got here down closely on the International Cricket Council (ICC) and high cricket boards, together with the BCCI, after Cricket South Africa (CSA) named as many as seven uncapped gamers in a 14-man squad for the two-Test sequence.
“Test match series were and Test matches in and of themselves, single games, were important events. The idea that you widen the whole thing out to sort of span three years and blah blah blah, some series are worth this, some series are worth that, some teams can’t be asked this week – it makes it even more nebulous.
“The solely effort that is been made to sort of try to hold it related, I believe, has made it worse,” Butcher said.
Butcher feels the ICC could have focussed on other relevant issues to secure the future of Test cricket instead of introducing the WTC.
“I do not know, in the entire flawed locations the hassle has been made. And the locations the place it would possibly even have made a distinction, i.e., levelling up revenues for TV rights, permitting nations to have the ability to hold maintain of their greatest gamers…
“Allowing them to be able to pay a universal standard of money for Test match appearances and whatever and then allow the richer boards to pay their players whatever they want to on top of that – I have no issue with any of that stuff.
“But that is only a give up, for those who ask me. It’s been a slow-moving automotive crash thus far and now it’s sort of like, bang – affect has been made.”
