World Test Championship is 'a slow-moving car crash': Mark Butcher
Former England cricketer Mark Butcher feels the arrival of the World Test Championship (WTC) has made it worse for the advertisement of Test cricket than it was before.
There has been a lot of talk about how home teams prepare pitches to suit their advantage to bag crucial WTC points, with an attempt to make the final at the end of every two-year cycle.
However, Mark Butcher reckons it has only made Tests less competitive and more one-sided, leading to potentially spectators losing interest from watching the format, which could have been the ICC's goal when they introduced the WTC. He told Wisden:
"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."
"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."
Mark Butcher on how ICC could have tried to increase Test cricket relevance
Mark Butcher believes one of the main reasons for the lack of competitiveness among teams in the Test format is because of some boards not being able to keep hold of their best players.
The lucrative T20 contracts make players retire from the Test format, invariably making the national teams weaker. Butcher reckons the ICC could have worked on all boards getting equal revenue through TV rights or anything that could help them tie their best players down to contracts with enough financial stability.
"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 Butcher.
"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."
England are set to tour India for five Tests, and the pitches are expected to be rank turners, just like the visitors received in Ahmedabad on their previous tour.