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A two-tier structure could be introduced in 2027 which would mean England, Australia and India playing each other more often in lucrative series.

A report in the Melbourne Age says that Jay Shah, the new chair of the International Cricket Council and former head of the Indian board, will meet with Richard Thompson and Mike Baird, the chairmen of the England & Wales Cricket Board and Cricket Australia, later this month to discuss the proposal. If ratified it would mean the ‘Big Three’ playing each other twice every three years rather than every four years under the current model.

Split into two divisions

Test cricket could be split into two divisions of seven and five with England, India, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Pakistan in the top division and Bangladesh, West Indies, Ireland, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe making up tier two.

Michael Vaughan, former England captain and Telegraph Sport columnist, voiced his support on Monday morning, saying: “It has to happen.” He has advocated two divisions before.

The current Future Tours Programme runs out in 2027. Talks will begin this year about its replacement with boards keen to maximise television broadcast revenue.

For the Big Three, playing each other brings in the most money. England play India this summer and counties will benefit from bumper gates while the majority of the board’s overseas television rights income is based on the India home series.

Read more at Telegraph

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In reply to CaribbeanCricket.com

Nothing radical - same as other sports.

Good...only there has to be relegation and promotion..

Top team of Second tier get promoted and last team of first tier gets relegated.... every test cycle....

does cricket even have enough teams for such a proposal?

as it stands now, it just seems like a ploy to have the wealthiest teams play together to keep the wealth amongst themselves

It's all about more money for the teams that already have money. It could mean that cricket standards might remain frozen in the 2nd tier countries

In reply to Onionman0

Agree - this is a good proposal.

The final nail in the windies coffin
Our test cricket will now surely die
Less monies and less interest to play test cricket

Why would any youngster play test cricket

In reply to CaribbeanCricket.com

stupid idea. england are ranked #6 in the WTC currently so they're a tier 2 team.

The two-tier system sounds like a great idea. It’s basically saying the smaller teams don’t matter.
Why is it great? It’ll cause “second tier” nations to prioritize T20 even more than they already do, along with further reducing the appeal of tests.

And this is fine by me!!

Agree 100%

Simple dollar$ and $en$e ... jus show me the money!!

In reply to Kay

i still think its a stupid idea but we have only ourselves to blame and it was that sort of situation in the 80s, it just wasn't in black and white. We played pakistan four times between 1980 and 1990......how many times did we play india....3 times, only once at home. We never played SL and only played NZ twice in two years because we still had the grudge from the 1980 tief series. Australia and England were money making tours so we played them a lot even though both became less competitive with every beating. But we played Pakistan four times, the two poorest of the then established boards played each other four times in ten years.......and the only reason is because the West Indies and Pakistan were the two best cricket teams in the world

Didn’t European soccer tried to come up with something similar recently, but it was stymied by FIFA. This idea should suffer the same faith.

In reply to birdseye

doubt it. Jay shah is meeting the heads of CA and the ECB about it, so it seems that the movers behind it this time might be the BCCI. Additionally, under the proposal, pakistan, sa, nz and sri lanka will be part of the top tier. So once they agree to it, its as good as done. In 2016 when the first proposal for a two tier system went to a vote, CWI actually voted in favor of the two tier system, india and SL voted against. SL now is in a much better place and could possibly finish 3rd in the WTC

In reply to Jumpstart

Correct, if this new system take hold, WI will be placed with Afghanistan, Ireland, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh.

Clive Lloyd is leading the opposition to it. Nothing from CWI so far.

In addition, the new structure will exempt India, Australia, England form relegation to the tier 2.

This will kill WI test cricket hope of revival.

The end is near.

Absolute NO from me. This is simply a greedy ploy to keep the money within the top three rather than share what is made - which would go a long way toward improving the overall competitiveness of the game at the test level.

For anybody who does not care about the future of test cricket, stick to watching your kiddie cricket in pyjamas under flashing lights, you would never understand real cricket anyway.

In reply to Emir

So, no matter how badly they play, they will always be a top-tier team, hence the reason why it won't last.
Only so much can go around the same roundabout before it failed
This was proposed by the European Super League in football and failed because it meant the founding teams would never be relegated.
And you know in any major sports with tiers you always have the bottom one or two teams being relegated the top one or two teams from the league below being promoted.
Or then there is really nothing to play for..
And when there's nothing to play for sports on a whole becomes boring and it stops making money. And this whole move it to make money.

What they should do is, starting at the next cycle, lay down the rules: Everybody is going to play in 1 league - top 6 goes into Tier 1 and rest go in Tier 2.

At the end of that Tier cycle:
- #6 from Tier 1 is automatically relegated and #1 from Tier 2 is promoted.
- #5 from Tier 1 and #2 from Tier 2 goes into a playoff with the winner going on to join the Tier 1 and the loser going into Tier 2

There should be no exemptions from being relegated.

In reply to Prako

Correct
cause then it comes to what to play for.

In reply to positiveg

yuh know michael vaughn saying they need to ring fence the ashes? as the wtc stands now, there shouldn't even be an ashes next year

I think it is a really bad idea. I am from India. As an Indian, how many times do you want to see India play the same opposition - Australia or England. In the last one year, India already seems to have played Australia half the time (in different formats). It gets boring very soon. If test cricket becomes India playing Australia or England every 6 months, everyone will be bored to death in a few years. The 2 tier system will spell the death of Test cricket not just in WI but everywhere. I am already bored of seeing India or Australia or both in the final of every championship (across formats) in last 1.5 year.

When I was growing up in the 80's, there were 8 teams and they were mostly all competitive with each other. Now we are down to a couple. Cricket in general (and test cricket in particular) will be better if more teams are competitive. It will be more exciting if we did not know the finalists even before the start of a tournament.

In my opinion, all effort should be made to make more teams competitive. It will make cricket more exciting and more money will follow automatically.

And, also as an outsider, I don't think WI test cricket is about to die. I think that cricket in WI is very much alive. The talent is there. It is just a question of putting the team together and nurturing it. I am very hopeful that WI test team will see better days soon.

In reply to Jumpstart

I do see some of Vaughns tweets and ve like he got too much time on his hands. Seems at times like he's trying to stay relevant being an instigator with some those tweets

Put another way…..

Would there be so much consternation, condemnation, and hand wringing here if WI were one of the top 5 teams and in no danger of being in the 2nd tier?

In reply to positiveg

Spot on. He is no stranger to verbal diarrhea.

In reply to 4REALQUICKS

that's true. doh understand how such a good captain could make such a stupid man. i mean kevin pietersen was stupid, but he ws also a stupid captain. but vaughn was actually a decent cappo

In reply to Emir

Have u seen the bias and favoritism in this clause?

There's already a second-division of Test cricket, comprising Afghanistan (11 Tests in 7 years), Ireland (9 Tests in 7 years) and Zimbabwe (119 Tests in 32 years, but only 5 in last 3 years). The question has to be asked - do these countries even want to play Test cricket, let alone more Tests, which is presumably what a second-division of 4 or 5 teams would entail. The players probably would, but their cricketing boards? ICC would surely have to allocate more funds to the second-division teams to compensate for playing more loss-making games and missing out on games against the bigger sides.

In reply to Chrissy

i agree with KTom that there is already effectively a 2nd tier of teams which only get to play 2 or 3 match Test series and we see in the year 2025 that WI has never played a test against Ireland and has only played one I believe against Afghanistan. I do not object to an official 2 tier series once the second tier is properly funded/subsidized, plays regularly at least 3 test series and has the possibility of promotion to the upper tier. I do not think that players who want to play franchise cricket only will ever stop merely because we are a first tier team. Similarly, I do not see the point in saying all teams are equal when only some get to play 5 test series and others are relegated to 2 and at best 3 test series.

In reply to PalsofMine

its a cost thing. England ranked no 6 in the wtc right now, but can afford to put on the ashes every three years. even though there are 5 teams ranked above threm, three of which are much poorer than them financially

In reply to Jumpstart

Then if test cricket is only about revenue generating rather than the quality of play and development of the sport, the concept of "test" cricket should be abolished and we should have glorified franchise league among Eng, Oz and India. call it F5dayIs. We can all watch with as much interest as we watch IPL

In reply to Jumpstart

Well, it's not a cost thing to the extent that the ECB make money, not lose it, from all their home series. Incidentally, the World Test Championship standings are not the same as the official ICC team rankings. As will be seen, England are currently ranked 4th. England's standing in the WTC table suffered from point deductions for alleged slow over rates - without those, I think they would have been 4th anyway.

In reply to imusic

I notice everyone of these experts on tiers evading this question ......

Greed is destroying the world. For a worldwide sport cricket doesn't even have enough world-class teams to.have a serious WC or test championship that would feature half the teams I. a football world cup. Large continents such as SA doesn't even have one such team! Africa only, Europe 1 sometimes (England is not in Europe), but they want the sport to grow right?