Far-fetched hopes for cricket’s World Test Championship

England's Jofra Archer has already indicated he’s had enough of bubbles

It’s a tournament that has a date for its final, and that’s about it. No confirmed venue, no commercial staging agreement and no sense that matches can be fulfilled to bring the competition to a meaningful resolution. Despite all this the ICC seems committed to staging the final of the World Test Championship next summer in England. A laudable but, at the moment, far-fetched ambition.

On Monday ECB executives discussed on a Zoom call a season that no one wishes to be replicated next year and stated pride at the way that the game had come together to negotiate various challenges that resulted in the entire men’s international calendar being completed.

Of the future, there was far greater uncertainty, including on the WTC, which is designed to provide some overarching context to Test cricket’s byzantine fixture list.

England’s winter has already been rearranged, with the autumn one-day tour to India cancelled, along with the World T20. A reordered schedule will include, hopefully, a one-day tour to South Africa before Christmas, a Test tour to Sri Lanka after Christmas and a combined red-ball and white-ball tour to India, before the IPL next spring. All this summer’s ingenuity and more will be needed to complete that in full.

With a number of England’s centrally contracted players already in IPL action in biosecure bubbles in the UAE, there has been a noticeable shift in sentiment around players’ mental wellbeing, with a recognition that there is a limit to how long they can be asked to play under such circumstances. Jofra Archer, who spent 87 days in the bubble last summer, has already indicated his unwillingness to extend his commitments to the Big Bash this winter, declaring he has “had enough of bubbles”.

England were able to complete their entire international summer, including Tests against West Indies, above, and Pakistan

“Something we’ve learnt about is the mental health and wellbeing of people spending significant time in the bubble,” said Steve Elworthy, the man chiefly responsible for creating the conditions under which the summer was saved. “Something we have to consider if we’re expanding from three months to six is that we need to mitigate as much of that as possible. We saw there was a ceiling of probably three or four weeks.”

Not all countries will have the capability of spending $1.8m on testing, or $700,000 on sanitisers, as the ECB did this summer. Not all governing bodies will have relationships with government that may allow the kind of special dispensation given to West Indies and Pakistan, who were allowed to train together while in quarantine.

All this, therefore, adds doubt over the fixture list. Tom Harrison, chief executive of the ECB, said that they would “plan early and decide late” about tours but added words of caution: “We will not sign off plans that we are not comfortable with in terms of the health and wellbeing of our players and staff.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has played havoc with the WTC fixture list. So far, by my count, six Test series have been affected or cancelled, with the Sri Lanka v Bangladesh series cancelled twice, the latest over quarantine stipulations. With four series affected, Bangladesh have been the most severely hit, which may indicate that financial considerations remain uppermost in importance as countries tackle the pandemic, rather than the WTC fixture list.

It gives the WTC table a horribly lopsided look. England have played 15 Tests so far, Bangladesh only three and Sri Lanka four. A three-horse race for the final has developed between India, Australia and England, which, of course, raises the possibility of two neutral teams competing in a country with potentially high COVID-19 restrictions.

Harrison indicated that the ICC was proceeding as scheduled, trying to work on headaches such as how to allocate points should series not get played. There is no decision yet on the venue (although Lord’s remains favourite) and no commercial staging agreement.

“We are talking about a COVID environment, and when you put COVID into a negotiation like this, it changes everything,” Harrison said. “If you are taking part in that fixture and you have potentially two neutral teams playing a world final in the UK, I’m pretty sure you’d want to know you are safe and protected when it comes to the health environment you are heading into.”

At some point, if too many fixtures are lost, the competition loses legitimacy — which was stretched in any case, given the uneven nature of it, with all teams not designated to play one another. The continued enthusiasm of the ICC is grounded to a large degree, no doubt, on the identity of the leaders — India. Their presence will guarantee a big enough payday, which, you suspect, was one of the prime reasons for the competition in the first place.

The Times