Could There Be A World Cup Of Test Cricket?

Trawling through the archives I was surprised to discover that in 1912 all the Test playing nations took part in a tournament whereby each team played three tests against each other. Admittedly the logistics of this unofficial world cup for Test Cricket were far easier than they would be today as there were only three Test playing nations at the time: England, Australia and South Africa. The Triangular Tournament of 1912 as it was known was the invention of Sir Abe Bailey a South African mining magnate. Any plans to repeat the Tournament would have been scuppered by the outbreak of the 1st World War.

I see no reason why a similar tournament cannot be held today. If the Tournament were to be played in a league format then a points system would have to devised for wins and draws. Copying football and having 3 points for a win and one for a draw would appear sensible as it rewards attacking play. If the tournament were to have a knock-out element then timeless tests would be preferable to the cricketing equivalent of a penalty shoot out, a bowl out (where players from both teams take in turns to bowl at the stumps in the absence of any batsman). There is a precedence for using a timeless test in this way, as the first two games between Australia and England in the 1912 Tournament were draws and so the organisers decreed that the final match be a timeless test to decide who should win the tournament, as South Africa were out of the running. Just for the record, England won the game in four days by 244 runs, thus making them undefeated world champions for the last 93 years!

I would suggest that the eight top Test playing nations, that is all of them bar Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, could complete a tournament in approximately a month and a half. The top teams could be seeded. A suggested format for the tournament could be as follows, current positions in world rankings in brackets.

Group A: Australia(1), India(4), Sri Lanka(6) & West Indies(8)
Group B: England(2), South Africa(3), Pakistan(5) and New Zealand(7)

All teams play the sides in their group once. This would be mean six matches in each group. Two matches in each group could be played consecutively. A five-day gap between each match would mean the group stage could be completed in 25 days. The top two teams from each group could contest the semi-finals with the two winners contesting the final. The semi-finals and finals would have to be timeless matches. Allowing six days for the timeless Tests and a five-day gap between matches could mean the whole tournament being completed in 47 days, or from May 1st to June 16th.

This would be a bold innovation in a world that has grown use to the Test series, but a championship that involves the playing of an actual series between nations would take too long. If the superior five-day version of the game is to survive in the modern world then changes are required. The ICC recognise this, hence the Super Series. Having abandoned this perhaps they could fill their now empty four year schedule with a Test championship.