Re-defining cricket's calendar
How to ensure all countries get enough opportunities to play? Here's some brainstorming I did on the FTP and structural changes needed for cricket to grow
The rise of T20 franchise cricket in the last decade or so has made the overall cricket calendar busy. Fan fatigue is often discussed amongst cricket lovers who try to keep up with matches all the time. The bigger concern is player fatigue though. Players and commentators around the world have been talking about this for at least the last 3 years (here’s one example after Ben Stokes’ ODI retirement). Indian teams in a bilateral T20I series look vastly different from ones that go to the T20 World Cup to ensure players get rotated and rested.
While conversations around workload management for players like Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah have started, the vast majority of concerns or statements related to fatigue, come from players and pundits from the Big 3 - India, England, and Australia. And this stems from the fact, that not all countries get a chance to play the amount of international cricket that players from the big 3 nations. South Africa’s 1st test v/s India in December last year was the first one since they played West Indies in February and they are on track to play 6-7 tests at home every two years.
Don’t get me wrong - I am not blaming T20 franchise cricket for the state of the game. Franchise cricket has given an avenue to many cricketers to survive and even thrive without having to make the national side’s XI. It’s also given way more opportunities to a lot of individuals from physiotherapists to team analysts and strategists amongst others and that’s a good thing. But there is a need to balance out the game’s calendar, to ensure all the money and opportunities aren’t concentrated with the big 3 and other nations as well as associate cricket get a chance to keep growing.
And like most fans, I would love to blame the ICC and the BCCI for everything’s that wrong with cricket. But that doesn’t answer the key question - how do you create a balanced Future Tour Programme?
Well, let’s give it a go!
Let’s start with some ground rules & assumptions:
First, although ODIs as a format get the least attention, the ODI World Cup continues to be the most prestigious trophy in Cricket (at least for now) and this will need a slot every 4-ish years.
T20s are the key to expanding the game and we need to use the T20 World Cups every 2 years to give new teams chances.
The Test Championship, while far from perfect, has started to gain importance and provides context to every test series. This will continue although we should explore the possibility of a 3-match series instead of a 1-match Final.
Cricket between the Big 3 continues to generate the most eyeballs and revenue, therefore they will continue having to play each every 2 years.
Again, keeping economics at the center of it, the other 9 teams will have a visit from each of the Big 3 every 3-4 years for a tour (Test as well as limited-overs).
The FTP should try to do its best to ensure the majority of a country’s players are available for 2 key domestic tournaments (list A and T20) so that these remain important and the quality is solid, unlike the Royal London Cup in England.
Each major cricketing nation will provide support to an associate nation to help develop players, coaches, and support staff.
Last but not least, if possible, it would be great to bring back the Intercontinental Cup to restart the pathway for Test status for other associate nations. It’s good for test cricket if it grows to more teams over time.
For the sake of this exercise, I am going to assume all parties (Big 3 or others) will be reasonable in accommodating each other’s preferences and work together to create a balanced FTP (easy one :D).
Logistically, it might be easiest to group teams based on the main cricket season when they can host matches at home. Teams in the Southern Hemisphere, that’s Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Zimbabwe play the majority of their cricket between December and April - that’s Group 1. The next group (Group 2) will be the West Indies and Sri Lanka since they have extensive monsoon seasons and the first half of the year is a good time for these countries to host cricket.
The two European countries, Group 3, England and Ireland will need to play during their summer months while the remaining 4 Asian teams in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh (Group 4) will just need to avoid the summer months (June to Aug). With those groupings figured out, I decided to do some research to confirm the key domestic tournaments for each of these countries and figure out their usual durations. Thanks to ChatGPT (and some other sources like ESPNCricinfo), here’s what I gathered:
With most first-class tournaments lasting several weeks and many even taking breaks to accommodate T20 tournaments or test cricket, there will always be some overlap with international cricket and even the country’s T20 tournament. But the aim should be minimizing that while ensuring each country can play adequate cricket.
But how many tests are “adequate”? One way is to look at the Big 3 and see how many home tests they have played in the last 10 years. Australia and India play close to an average of 10 tests each year, the leader is England with close to 12 tests each year (126 in the last 10 years). Therefore, trying to get each country to play 10 tests would be a good benchmark to start with.
What about T20Is? While India and Pakistan have played 150+ T20Is in the last decade, the mean for all nations is closer to 135. However, this includes 5 T20 World Cups, where these teams played an average of at least 3 games each. So a more realistic number for bilateral or non-ICC T20Is each year is about 120 over a decade and therefore 12 each year.
ODIs are the trickiest to plan. There is still interest in ODIs but it’s been challenging to market ODIs sine they became the ‘in-between’ format. With a long World Cup and preparations for it being the most pressing topic for 2023, teams played a lot of ODIs last year. However, over the 3 years from 2021 to 2023, the top 12 teams played a median of 46 matches. Removing the 8 matches from the World Cup - that is about another 12 ODIs each year. Now, in reality, this will vary depending on whether it’s an ODI World Cup year or not, but from a planning and execution perspective wouldn’t it be better to have consistency?
Just like fans in/around Cape Town know they can plan to be at Newlands for the New Year test, they would have an idea of when and how many ODIs and T20Is will be played each year. This will also be great for visiting fans who can plan their travel with minimal last-minute adjustments or changes needed. A good way to fit (roughly) 10 tests, 12 T20Is, and 12 ODIs in each year for all the 12 teams would be to have it over 4 tours - 2 away and 2 home with three and two tests along with 3 ODIs and T20Is each.
Each tour with these matches would need to be about 5-6 weeks long. About 2.5 weeks for 6 LOIs and then another 2.5-3 weeks for 3 tests. Now, the reality of the situation is that it’s very likely England will play only 2 tests with Ireland but 4 with India. Similarly, they might try to play more T20Is with West Indies than ODIs, but it’s probably safe to assume each tour will vary from 4 to 6 weeks.
Based on all these assumptions and the current schedule of the domestic tournaments, I tried to put together a tentative schedule, which you can find below.
By no means is this perfect, this is just a first pass at trying to organize 12 teams playing home and away based on favorable seasons, but here are some observations:
Forget lesser-popular tournaments like the MLC or ILT20, I haven’t even added the Asia Cup, or one of the World Cups to this mix and yet this calendar is quite packed.
There’s a T20 franchise league happening nearly every month and while it’s unlikely every single one will become big, however as ownership (or stakes) get shared, like the case with IPL, SA20, and MLC, the boards will get pushed to ensure there’s no overlap so key players are always available.
It’s also not easy to balance this calendar. South Africa, as an example, is playing nearly all its cricket in one half of the year. Similar to Ireland.
I haven’t even considered important intricacies such as Afghanistan’s need to host at a neutral place, finding changing times for the World Cup and WTC based on venues, etc.
In addition, let’s say all the top boards agree to support neighboring associate teams, (say Australia helps PNG, India helps Nepal, South Africa partners with Namibia, and so on) and over time, they can develop good-quality cricketers, how to do include them in an already packed calendar?
The first option that comes to mind is for all top teams to play fewer matches amongst each other to open up the calendar to include newer nations. Franchises are never really going to sign up for this, so it will have to be international teams that will need to sacrifice. A few years back, this might have sounded outlandish but in today’s world where Trent Boult has no NZ contract, it’s certainly possible. However, simply exposing associate nations to top teams doesn’t ensure they become competitive. There needs to be development programs, facilities, coaches and proper management right from the grassroots level to ensure nations produce top cricketers and the cricket is competitive. Bangladesh, as an example, has produced better cricketers over the years but they have still won just 6 off their 65 away tests.
Another (sort of) outlandish solution is to change cricket’s structure to move to something like Soccer, where clubs or franchise cricket is the main method of playing the sport with infrequent internationals. I don’t mean we stop playing ODIs or Tests, but in fact, we have franchise cricket for those formats as well. Imagine watching Rashid Khan bowl in Test Cricket along side Jasprit Bumrah and Jofra Archer. While it’s a tempting thought, even if all required stakeholders are on board, there is an important downside to this. Franchise cricket hasn’t helped too many associate cricketers - after all most franchises are coaches/managed by ex-players and coaches from the same top cricketing nations. So this method is unlikely to be a way to “grow the game” or make it “just”.
The only reasonable solution that remains is the introduction of a 2-Tier league with relegations and promotions. This isn’t the first time such an idea has been proposed and the BCCI didn’t like this idea since the test team in the early 2010s wasn’t doing well. However, with certain rules (like allowing a team to play up to 2 teams in the other tier) in place, the ICC could ensure the top 3 teams play each other enough in each Test cycle. There’s potential to start with 2 tiers of 6 each with 1 team getting relegated/promoted each time.
Eventually, as the Intercontinental Cup is re-started and associate teams can get back to playing enough 3-day or 4-day cricket, there’s a possibility of adding 2 teams every 2 cycles or 4 years. This would help test cricket be competitive while also ensuring every result matters. In addition, a T20I Super League (based on the concept of the ODI Super League) would be beneficial to ensure teams like Nepal, and Netherlands among others get the exposure they need in the limited-overs format as well.
Side Note - I know what some of you are going to say - this is just one cricket enthusiast putting together a schedule and changing the structure based on limited information. Surely something better can be planned by a team with experience in Sports Management and partnerships with all boards.
You are certainly right, but the idea of this exercise was to show how challenging creating an “equal” FTP is. I will certainly be picking up this topic again, to further explore how a 2-tier system could help ensure that there are more opportunities for cricketers in the US, or to ensure a talent like Kagiso Rabada has a fair shot of playing 100 tests for South Africa.