Former England cricketer Mark Butcher believes that the World Test Championship’s (WTC) introduction has worsened the situation for Test cricket’s development. Mark Butcher wants ICC to increase the Test matches for the nations apart from the Big 3: India, Australia & England.
Much discussion has focused on how home teams modify their pitches to their advantage in order to gain valuable World Test Championship (WTC) points and advance to the final match at the conclusion of each two-year cycle. Test cricket is now irrelevant and on the verge of dying as the West Indies and South Africa named a depleted squad for their upcoming test series against Australia and New Zealand, respectively.
The only effort that’s been made to kind of try and keep it relevant, has made it worse -Mark Butcher
Mark Butcher, however, believes that it has merely made Tests more biased and less competitive, which could cause viewers to lose interest in the format—something that the ICC may have intended when they instituted the WTC.
“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,” He told Wisden.
“The only effort that’s been made to kind of try and keep it relevant, I think, has made it worse. If you ask me. It’s been a slow-moving car crash up to now and now it’s kind of like, bang – impact has been made,” he added.
Mark Butcher discusses the ways the ICC might have attempted to make Test cricket more significant
Mark Butcher thinks that certain boards’ inability to retain onto their finest players is a major contributing factor to the absence of competition amongst teams in the Test format.
“The places where it might actually have made a difference, i.e., leveling up revenues for TV rights, allowing countries to be able to keep hold of their best players,” said Mark Butcher.
Players leave the Test format due to the attractive T20 contracts, which inevitably weakens the national teams. According to Butcher, the ICC might have endeavoured to ensure that all boards received equal revenue from TV rights or any other means that would enable them to secure contracts that adequately secure their financial futures for their greatest players.
“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,” he elaborated.
Five Test matches between England and India are scheduled, and the pitches should be identical as the ones the visitors saw in Ahmedabad on their last tour.