Cricket Australia wants it, but the Indians and the English boards are not so keen. The world championship of Test cricket was originally proposed by Rohan Sajdeh of the Boston Consulting Group and strongly advocated by CA, which was seen as a viable alternative to the Future Tours program of international cricket seems unlikely to see the light of day according to the recent cricket news.

It was envisaged that there would be a points system, a finals series and, ultimately, trophy presentation to add context and structure to the five-day game and perhaps increase its popularity and currency. However TV revenues from the championships may be one of the main stumbling blocks to the concept. Also it would involve nine sets of home-and-away Test series into four-year cycles which presents obvious logistic difficulties. The other problem seems to be about ‘icon’ series like the Ashes etc, which may be undermined by the championships.

Principal advisor to the International Cricket Council, I S Bindra has been a proponent of the championship and said "It is not final, but there have been some reservations. Those two boards (India and England) agreed that there needed to be some refinements and modifications made. They are the financial powerhouses of the game and they obviously have huge television rights deals at stake."  

CA chief executive James Sutherland, though a leading advocate for the championship format, was reported as having said that there is not a big appetite for the championship model. He predicted the post-2012 Test landscape would closely resemble the current FTP, saying, "There is a bit of focus on the FTP post-2012, and my feel at the moment is that there's not a big appetite for the Test championship model. Whether that changes in the future I don't know, but as of right now it seems that there is more focus on FTP enhancement after 2012 than a whole new model. If you look closely at the FTP as it stands you see that some teams play each other on four-year cycles and others on two-year cycles. From what I'm hearing, we'll something not terribly different to that. We did put a bit of thought into (the championship format) ... and the ICC management was quite keen on the concept. But it hasn't been looked upon as being the right mix or the right way to progress."

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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