Cut In Tests May Improve The Quality

Tim Wigmore analyses Test cricket’s new structure that leaves only the Ashes to be played over five matches

- Tim Wigmore

Enjoy a five-Test series? Enjoythe Ashes: it looms as almost the last preserve of five-match tussles. Under the new Future Tours Programme (FTP), which outlines the structure of international cricket from 2019-23, only the Ashes and England India will be played over five Tests.

Only three others from 2019-23 – two India-Australia clashes, and one England-South Africa series – will even comprise four. Instead, series of two and three matches will be the norm.

On one level, of course, this is a great shame: the theatre of a five-match Test series is unique in sport, allowing plots to simmer over weeks, the weaknesses of players laid bare. And yet, on a deeper level, perhaps the demise of longer series should not be lamented.

After all, the flipside of every five Test series is a couple of matches tacked onto the periphery of summer. For every five-match Ashes series, there must be an England-New Zealand 2015 series – an enthralling two-match contest which deserved far better than to be played in May. For every five match England-India series in 2018, there is a two-game England-Pakistan series at the start of summer, no matter that England and Pakistan played out a pulsating 2-2 draw in 2016.