How to fix cricket: A fan’s blueprint

Any piece of writing that proposes to fix cricket must first tackle a fundamental question: Is cricket broken? The answer lies somewhere between yes and no. The ongoing men’s World Cup is a perfect example. There were a number of close, exciting matches that reaffirmed one’s love for the game. There were some upsets. The semi-final picture was not settled until the final week of the round-robin stage. The stands were full, belying the concern over the declining popularity of the game in the green and pleasant land in which it originated.

But the gulf in cricketing standards between the rich and poor nations that play the game was evident. The thrillers were the exception, not the norm. In the 27 unsuccessful chases in the league stage, the losing team came within 10 percent of the target 11 times; in the 14 successful chases, the end came in the final five overs only five times. The exciting cricket was mostly the consequence of pitches slowing down with use, and the toss and the ground conditions playing a major part. Teams that won the toss and batted first won 14 games and lost five. Only two targets above 250 were chased down. Only four targets below 250 were defended. Of these six matches, only Sri Lanka’s victory over England—and possibly Bangladesh chasing down 322 runs in 41.3 overs against the West Indies—could be considered an upset. A first-time winner is assured, but anyone who follows the sport would probably have correctly predicted the semi-finalists even before the tournament began.

There was also the ever-present reality that unlike most other sports, the world cups are being increasingly designed to restrict rather than enhance cricket’s global popularity. This was the smallest World Cup in 27 years, represented by fewer than ten percent of the members of the International Cricket Council. It turned out that even the large crowds at the stadiums were bolstered by two Indian fan groups that entered into a sweetheart deal with the ICC and sold over twenty thousand tickets for league matches. In England, the host nation, the matches could be viewed only on premium cable—the tournament broadcaster Sky, which has held the monopoly over rights to telecast English cricket since 2005. Consequently, the home team’s league matches were watched by an average domestic audience of just over half a million, as compared to the 11.7 million people who tuned in to the BBC to watch England lose to the United States in the semi-finals of the women’s football World Cup, on 2 July. It was on 5 July, two days after England qualified for the semi-finals, that Sky announced that it would allow the final to be shown on free-to-air television, if the home team were to qualify.

Like the rest of the world, cricket is at a late-capitalist phase in its history. An era of increasing globalisation—the ICC has added 79 new member countries since 1990—and revenues has given rise to monopolistic behaviour and regulatory capture by the three biggest entities in the business. The structure of the sport is being shaped to maximise profits for these big three—the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the England and Wales Cricket Board and Cricket Australia. This means a World Test Championship in which teams will play an unequal number of matches. This means a World Cup that was designed to maximise the number of India matches. This means the decimation of the talent pools of weaker teams as players are incentivised to pick the T20 franchise over the country. According to a 2016 survey conducted by the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations, an organisation that represents professional cricketers, 58.6 percent of players from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the West Indies, New Zealand and South Africa said they would consider rejecting a national contract, in favour of exclusively playing in domestic T20 leagues. National contracts for a team like the West Indies can often pay their players a quarter of the contract for Australian, English and Indian cricketers.

There are also fundamental sporting issues with cricket. Test batsmen seem to have lost the ability to bat time, which means that matches rarely last the full five days. Although run rates are the highest they have ever been, bowling strike rates—the average number of balls for the fall of each wicket—are the lowest in a century. One-day cricket continues to be plagued by what is known as the middle-overs problem, with long, dull periods of uncontested singles and defensive bowling over a major chunk of most innings. Over the years, the ICC has sought to address this problem, but its solutions have further destabilised the balance between bat and ball, the source of much debate among cricket fans. Fewer and fewer teams seem to be able to compete on the world stage; for every Bangladesh punching above its weight, there is a Sri Lanka in seemingly terminal decline. Add to this the deepening gulf between the sport’s haves and have-nots and the end result is too many matches devoid of interest and quality.

Even if cricket is not broken, there is much that can be improved in the sport, in order to improve the quality of the spectacle and increase the number of spectators. Having watched and loved the sport—and many other sports—for two decades, I have developed a blueprint to structurally reform cricket.

The international governance structure of cricket is dominated by the priorities of the big three, which are often at cross purposes with the priorities of the fans of the sport. Although the ICC has made several well-intentioned attempts in recent years at improving the game, the interests of the boards that dominate it limit the vision of what can be done. Like Keynesian economic reforms, the blueprint does not address the real source of the rot in the sport—corporate greed and corruption—but seeks to mitigate its effects. But just as a return to Keynesianism counts as radical leftism in today’s world, these piecemeal reforms to improve fairness and posit the fan as the focal point of cricket’s future, rather than the profits of a few monopolists, would probably be too radical for the game’s current custodians to contemplate.

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Test cricket has always had anaemic audience figures. Any attempt to improve audiences for this format ought to look at what has worked for the closest analogue to the sport. The Rugby union is as close to cricket as it gets, as a bourgeois sport with its popularity restricted to the Commonwealth, and whose intricate rules and technical requirements have ensured the persistence of inequalities among nations in talent and popularity. However, there is lesser hand-wringing in the rugby world about the future of the sport than there is in cricket. Rugby is growing, not shrinking.

Like cricket, the pinnacle of rugby is the Test match. However, a rugby Test is not different from any other format of the game—it is the term used for international matches. It lasts eighty minutes, not five days, and therefore, it would not be fair to compare viewership figures. But it is worth comparing stadium atmospheres. It is worth comparing contexts.

Over the past 12 months, the England rugby team has played nine Test matches—four during the winter, and five in the Six Nations Championship in the spring. The winter Tests were against South Africa, New Zealand and Australia—the three southern-hemisphere giants of the sport, which are not part of the Six Nations—as well as Japan, an emerging power that will host this year’s World Cup. Even though the matches were not consequential in terms of a prestigious international tournament, they furthered long-standing rivalries—with challenge trophies at stake—and provided much-needed preparation for the competitions of this year. The five matches in the spring were part of a round-robin tournament that features the best teams of the northern hemisphere, and none of them could be termed a dead rubber. All the matches were well-attended, and watched all over the rugby world.

In contrast, the England cricket team has played 11 Test matches—a five-match series at home against India last summer and two away-series in Sri Lanka and the West Indies during the winter. Although the series with India was a contest for cricket supremacy, viewed with great interest all over the cricketing world, the tours of Sri Lanka and the West Indies were obscure affairs. They only served prior commitments and helped secure ranking points in a four-year-long championship that, far from being the pinnacle of the sport, is rarely followed by casual fans. The West Indies upset England by winning their series 2–1, but apart from spurring a little more interest among fans of the two teams—and diehard fans of the dying format—and marginally changing the international rankings, the series had little impact.

The Indian team’s rise to the top of the Test world has been followed with keen interest over the past few years, and shows that cricket fans—even the boisterous millions whose love for the Indian Premier League is seen in apocalyptic terms by Test-match purists—do care about the longest form, provided they have something to care about. Followers of the sport, and the ICC itself, have understood for a while that the way to save Test cricket is to provide more context to matches, even if it means playing fewer Tests overall. In 2016, Dave Richardson, the then chief executive of the ICC, told The Cricket Monthly, “If teams are playing in a proper structured competition, the value of bilateral series will increase and improve, at least enabling countries who want to play Test cricket to break even.”

The administrators have sought to do this by finally agreeing upon a way to hold a World Test Championship, a three-year cycle that will begin after the World Cup. However, the format for this championship is flawed, largely because of the misplaced priorities of the game’s oligarchs. The teams will play bilateral series of unequal lengths, which are determined by television ratings. India, for instance, will play a five-Test series against England, four Tests against Australia, three against South Africa and two each against Bangladesh, New Zealand and the West Indies. It will not play Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Although the tournament will be a round robin, each team will play only six others, leading to unequal opposition strengths. New Zealand will play only 14 Tests, and not face either England or South Africa, while Australia play 18 Tests against all but Sri Lanka and the West Indies. Also, the tournament will not include three teams that do have Test status—Afghanistan, Ireland and Zimbabwe—leaving them at the mercy of individual boards, which may or may not schedule bilateral series with them. Going by the recent track record, such as the one-off four-day Test South Africa deigned to play against Zimbabwe in 2017, this is unlikely to benefit them.

What would a fairer Test championship look like? For one, it would include all 12 Test-playing teams, and use more objective standards for which team plays how many matches. The existing inequalities in the Test game would limit how competitive the tournament would be, but there is no reason to bake in further inequalities in the format.

I would suggest a double-elimination format for the Test championship—an extension of the play-off system currently used in the IPL. The top four teams of the previous tournament would receive a bye in the first round. The remaining eight teams would be paired up to play three-match series, with the winners facing the top four in another set of three-match series. The losers from these two rounds would then be paired up in eliminators, playing two Tests—one home and one away—with the winning teams remaining in the tournament. These teams would face each other, as well as the teams that lose the subsequent rounds in the main bracket, in further eliminators.

These subsequent rounds would have longer series, with the top four after the second round playing a four-match series, the two winners of those then playing a five-match series and the winner of that playing the team that survives the eliminator system, in a six-match final series. This means that it is entirely possible that India plays a three-Test series against the West Indies, a four-Test series against Australia, a five-Test series against England and two three-Test series against South Africa in the final, and that Afghanistan are eliminated after playing five Tests. But such an outcome could be averted by the teams’ performances on the ground, rather than by restructuring the economic and political balance of power in the cricket world.

A home advantage could be settled using the format used in the Six Nations and the Davis Cup in tennis, where it alternates over successive iterations of the same match-up, with one team playing at home in one edition, and then away the next time the two teams meet. The final series, with its six matches, could have three matches in either country.

A key technical question in designing such a championship is how to deal with draws. Although their frequency has decreased in recent years, they still occur roughly once in three to four matches and their potential to cause tied series limits the ways in which a Test championship can be conducted. I would suggest adapting the bonus-point system used in the county championship in England. At the end of 100 overs in the first innings of each team, the batting side can score up to five points, based on how many runs it has scored, while the bowling side can score up to three points, based on how many wickets it has taken. A team scores 16 points for a win, and three for a draw. This means that an outright win counts significantly higher than a draw with all eight possible bonus points, and that bonus points would only come into play if the series were tied in terms of matches won.

Although this bonus-point system was designed to administer a round-robin league, its use in bilateral series would mean that it is extremely unlikely that teams are tied on points at the end. Any resultant ties could be broken by comparing the cumulative batting average of the two teams. This makes it possible to hold a knockout tournament, since each series would have a definite winner and loser. It could also borrow another provision from the county championship: an eight-point penalty for the home team if the pitch is doctored. The ICC could appoint an international panel of curators to prescribe minimum standards for pitches, and administer the penalty if a pitch is not up to scratch.

By staggering the series in a way that no two Tests take place simultaneously, you could ensure that the cricketing audience is not split, and each individual match can potentially attract a global audience. By reducing the supply of Test cricket to match the reduction in demand, and increasing the stakes in each match, you could theoretically attract more spectators to fill the empty stands. By instituting a knockout system, you could reduce the number of mismatches in latter stages, with the cream of the Test world rising to the top, and facing each other, by the end of the three or four-year-long tournament. The bonus-point rule would also encourage more aggressive cricket, while rewarding longevity—a team would have to play 100 overs in order to maximise its points’ haul, something that has occurred in just over half of all first innings—without significantly altering the nature of the contest.

An additional reform—one which the powers that be would probably not accept, even if they adopt the rest of this blueprint—could be to have a centralised television deal for all Test cricket, along the lines of ICC events, with revenues shared equally by all 12 participating boards. Even if the revenue shares were determined by results, that would still be a marginal improvement on the current system, which perpetuates existing inequalities through a vicious cycle: cash-strapped boards struggle to raise revenues, as stronger teams prefer to play them as infrequently as possible.

The reduction of long-form cricket could be compensated for by increasing first-class cricket. Similar to the system currently in the works, teams could schedule bilateral series outside this tournament, but these would be restricted to four-day first-class matches, rather than full Tests. Teams could prepare for upcoming fixtures in the Test championship by playing teams that have been eliminated, or teams without a Test status—a four-day game can make even mismatches more exciting, with weaker teams finding it easier to salvage a draw in a losing cause. This system would mean that every Test match is consequential, not just in a vague ranking cycle, but in determining who plays whom next, and who is consigned to first-class purgatory until the next edition. Additional teams could be granted Test status if they win three first-class matches against the established teams, gradually expanding the world championship.

The four-day format could also be used for a year-long international league, along the lines of rugby’s Pro14 and Super Rugby club competitions, with the top domestic sides from each nation participating. The trouble with the ill-fated Champions League T20 was that various franchises could claim a single player, and giving the IPL teams dibs provided them a perennial, unfair advantage. Since domestic first-class competitions generally disallow foreign players, this would not be an issue, and such a tournament would provide a global stage for Test prospects to prove themselves against world-class opposition.

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While it makes sense to largely preserve the nature of a Test match, which has not changed significantly since the 1870s and is rightly considered the purest form of the sport, there is no reason to remain similarly conservative about one-day internationals. ODIs were an innovation when created in the 1960s and have changed drastically over the years through a series of experiments.

In a recent two-part article for the cricket-news website ESPN Cricinfo, Kartikeya Date traces the evolution of ODIs over the years. He provides a clinical analysis of the difference between Tests and limited-overs cricket:

The four-innings game is one of control, where the bowlers try to dismiss batsmen who try to avoid being dismissed. Scoring rates and dismissal rates in that format have remained more or less stable over more than a century. Periods where teams have tried to score quickly have also been periods where wickets fall more quickly. The contest between bat and ball is optimally balanced in the four-innings contest.

In contrast, the limited-overs game is a contest of efficiency. Given a certain number of deliveries, how efficiently can a batting side risk its wickets to score the highest possible total? Similarly, what kind of bowling attack is best equipped to restrict opponents to the smallest possible total, given a certain number of deliveries? Over the 48 years since 1971, different answers have been offered to these questions.

These answers have been offered not just by teams seeking to take advantage of inefficiencies in existing methods, but also by administrators seeking to make the games more balanced between bat and ball, and more exciting overall. Date recounts the progression of these innovations: the former Australian head coach Bob Simpson’s strategy of conserving wickets before accelerating at the end; the ICC’s inclusion of fielding restrictions, which led to pinch hitters opening the innings; the attempt to disrupt the middle-overs stalemate by introducing supersubs and elective power plays; the current regime of fixed fielding restrictions and two new balls.

The evidence from the current World Cup does suggest that, despite the astronomical scores of recent times, ODIs today maintain at least the semblance of a balance between bat and ball. Indiscriminate hitting can only get you so far, as can merely restrictive bowling. The best teams attack throughout the match, whether with the bat or the ball. Specialists are doing better than bits-and-pieces players, no matter what you think of the former Indian cricketer and commentator Sanjay Manjarekar’s Twitter feud with Ravindra Jadeja.

But the current format is by no means perfect. There is still too much dependence on winning the toss, especially in day-night matches with dew. The two new balls make it harder for spinners to do well, and for faster bowlers to generate reverse-swing. The limit of four fielders outside the ring, for 60 percent of the game, leaves enough room for an attacking batting order to rack up over four hundred runs on a good day, and pitch. Weaker teams often lack the depth to compete throughout the 100 overs, which leads to an inexorable drift to a preordained result.

The silver bullet that has been proposed over the years—most famously, by Sachin Tendulkar in 2009—is to split the 100 overs of an ODI into four innings, instead of two. “Today, we can tell the result of close to seventy-five percent of matches after the toss,” Tendulkar told the news channel Times Now at the time. “We know how the conditions will affect the two teams.” Breaking the game up into four 25-over chunks would ensure that the result “is not too dependent on the toss because, for example, in a day-night match both the teams will have to bat under lights.”

I would suggest adopting Tendulkar’s suggestion, with some tweaks. ODIs have suffered from being an intermediate format, between the classical Test match and the explosive T20. The authorities should embrace this intermediate status. Instead of breaking the 50 overs wherein each side bats into two innings of equal length, an ODI should be split into two 30-over sessions played under Test conditions, followed by two 20-over innings played under T20 rules. This means in the first innings there would be no fielding restrictions—besides the rule, established after the notorious “Bodyline” Ashes series of 1932–33, preventing more than two fielders behind square on the leg side—or limits on how many overs a single player can bowl. The first six overs of the second innings would have only two fielders outside the ring, with a maximum of five outfielders for the rest of the overs. Bowlers would get a maximum of four overs each in this phase, regardless of how many they bowled in the first innings.

To further reduce the dependence on the toss, teams would choose either to bat first and last, or second and third. That way, regardless of whether the pitch is a dry turner or a green top, the team batting first and last would face the best and worst of the conditions. Only one ball would be used for the entirety of either team’s batting effort. Unlike Test matches, the second innings would not mean starting again, but picking up from where the team left off at the end of the first.

This format would have a number of advantages over the current system. It would make the toss and ground conditions less of a factor in the results—particularly reducing abandonments due to weather conditions. This is the benefit that first inspired Tendulkar to think about this innovation, after the final of the 2002 Champions Trophy had to be abandoned, despite over a hundred overs of play over two days. Spectators arriving at the stadium halfway through the game would not miss one team’s batting entirely, but be able to watch at least a T20. The return to a single ball would restore the arts of finger spin and reverse swing, lost now since they require an older ball for success. Aggression and patience would both be rewarded—more importantly, neither would be punished, as there would be space for both the explosive early-career Mahendra Singh Dhoni as well as the careful late-career Dhoni. Teams would be incentivised to find batsmen who can attack under Test conditions, such as Virender Sehwag, and bowlers who can take wickets at the death, such as Jasprit Bumrah. But the best performers would be those who can do well in all formats, such as Virat Kohli. The middle-overs problem would be eliminated with the elimination of the middle overs.

Although this change would not necessarily lead to closer finishes, it would delay the air of inevitability about the result. One team could find itself well in front after half the match, but to do so, it would have to dominate with both the bat and the ball. The 30 overs of Test conditions would also reduce overall scoring rates, which often makes for more competitive matches—as the World Cup has shown. Fielding teams could attack with the opponents against the ropes, without resorting to defensive run-saving strategies necessitated by the fielding and bowling restrictions. Teams with weaker bowling depths would be able to shield this weakness, since their best bowler could theoretically bowl 19 of the 50 overs. Teams would be able to compensate for a slow first innings by going hell for leather in the second, provided they kept wickets in hand.

The emphasis of this shift would be on improving the quality of cricket—rather than its competitiveness—by mitigating what Date diagnoses as a structural bias against bowlers in the limited-overs game. The current rules have forced teams to focus on specialists, and cricket is better for it. Changing the rules would institutionalise this trend. This would help with the development of players, as boards would be incentivised to invest in both Test and T20 specialists. Young cricketers would no longer see concentrating on Tests as condemning them to a single format, à la Cheteshwar Pujara. The quality of play in the two other formats would improve, as ODIs would provide additional practice in honing the skills they require, and a larger sample space of performance for selectors looking to pick Test and T20 teams.

The world cup format is also in need of reform. Associate nations—numbering 92, these are cricket-playing nations that do “not qualify as a Full Member, but where cricket is firmly established and organised”—have rightly been critical of being shut out of the sport’s most prestigious tournament. No sport seeking to widen its audience and player base would reduce the number of teams in its world cup—football is moving from 32 to 48 teams in 2022; rugby could grow from 20 to 24 teams in 2023.

At the very least, like the Test championship, the cricket world cup should include every team that has been granted ODI status. This currently includes the 12 Test-playing nations, and eight others that have been given temporary status until 2022. While a 20-team world cup is probably overkill, given current standards, a 16-team event would be relatively easy to organise. As with Test cricket, permanent ODI status could be granted to any team that wins three matches against a full member, leading to the eventual expansion of the world cup.

In order to avoid an over-reliance on knockout games, I would suggest dividing the 16 teams into four groups of four teams each, with the top team in each group, and the two second-placed teams with the best records, qualifying for the Super Sixes, followed by semi-finals and finals. Bonus points for chasing down a total within 40 overs, or restricting the opposition to less than 80 percent of one’s score could be reintroduced—as existed in the old Australian triangular tournaments. This would provide added impetus for the stronger teams while playing the minnows. The four-innings format would reduce abandonments, but any tournament of this importance must have reserve days for all matches. As in the rugby World Cup, the top three in each group would qualify for the next edition, with the four bottom-placed teams playing the eight top teams in the World Cricket League—the ICC’s multi-division competition for associate nations—in the qualifiers.

This is a happy middle ground between the twin imperatives of having the best teams play each other as often as possible and including as many teams as possible. To win the tournament, a team would have to play ten matches—as opposed to 11 under the current system—and would play the five other top teams at least once. The whole tournament would be 40 matches, eight fewer than the existing format.

The current format, however, has its appeal for being the fairest way to determine the best teams, even if the gulf in standards meant that the top four were never really in doubt until Sri Lanka upset England. I would adopt it for the Champions Trophy instead, replacing the existing format of two groups of four with an eight-team round-robin. The top two teams in each of the four groups at the previous world cup would qualify. Also, India’s exit in the World Cup because of “45 minutes of bad cricket,” as Kohli put it, demonstrates that such a tournament should include an IPL-style playoff system, with the top two sides in the league stage getting a second chance in the knockouts. This would double the tournament in size—from 15 to 32 matches—but would increase the prestige of the event. In any case, reducing the number of pointless bilateral series would carve out additional space to expand the tournament.

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The T20 format is the one I would tinker with the least. It is the most accessible form of the game. The domestic T20 leagues are commercial juggernauts, and have proven very good at unearthing future stars. Although the format is skewed in favour of explosive batsmen, its popularity would suggest that this is a feature, rather than a bug. And the bowlers are evolving ways to stem the flow of runs and getting better at taking wickets, although this is not reflected in run rates. Consequently, there seems to be little upside in further skewing the imbalance by introducing 10-over or 100-ball cricket, or in abandoning the shortest format altogether.

My suggestion for T20 cricket would be to expand the reach of the format, as a television-friendly entry-point into the game, along the lines of seven-a-side rugby—as opposed to the 15-a-side Test matches. The ICC took a welcome step in this regard last year, when it gave international status to all T20 games between its members. The next logical step would be to expand the world T20 championship to, say, 24 teams—the existing 12 full members and 12 probable qualifiers. I would introduce separate continental qualifying tournaments, as in the football and rugby world cups, instead of the current reliance on the World Cricket League, which features 50-over matches, as the feeder to the qualifying tournament.

I would also endorse the popular argument for including T20 cricket in the Olympics, just as rugby sevens was included in the Olympic programme in 2016. According to a survey conducted by the ICC, 87 percent of cricket fans wanted the inclusion of T20 in the world’s largest sporting event. The ICC’s decision to give T20 status to all 104 members was meant to further this goal. However, efforts to introduce cricket in the 2028 Olympics have been stymied by the intransigence of the BCCI, which fears governmental interference if it is brought under the Indian Olympic Association and the National Anti-Doping Agency. This is rich coming from a board in which over a third of its full members are from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

An April 2018 report by the Law Commission of India concluded that although the BCCI was not a national sports federation, or NSF, that received government funding, its monopoly over the game in India meant that it performed a public function, and it has received government assistance in the form of subsidised land and tax concessions. The report noted that in 2012, the then sports minister, Ajay Maken, had told parliament that “so far as BCCI is concerned, the Government of India has been treating it as an NSF and has been approving its proposals for holding events in India and participating in international events abroad.” If the BCCI wishes to exist independent of government patronage, perhaps it should stop nominating cricketers every year for the government-administered Arjuna Awards.

It is such examples of petulance that really cause me to be frustrated at the governance of the game. Here is a great way to expand the game for its own good, thwarted by one board’s insistence on protecting itself from increased oversight, despite a reputation for corruption. The law commission’s report, for instance, was meant to settle the question of whether the Right to Information Act was applicable to the BCCI, as it is for all other sports federations. Despite the overwhelming support among the cricket community to go ahead with Olympic participation, the BCCI’s veto cripples the ICC’s resolve.

The BCCI’s actions over the past decade suggest that it would veto most of the reforms I have suggested here. And not for sensible cricketing reasons either. The Indian cricket team is one of the best in the world today. It would likely go far in a revamped Test championship or world cup, and T20 in the Olympics would give the country its best hope for a medal. Yet, commercial considerations mandated a reform of the World Cup to prevent a repeat of India’s early exit in 2007, and have ensured that Bangladesh has played only one Test match in India despite having played Tests for two decades. A world in which the number of India matches depends on how well India plays, rather than how many votes it controls in the ICC, is anathema to administrators who operate along these lines. And the game continues to suffer the consequences of such thinking. It is time for a change.