A two-tier system will save Test cricket. Here’s why

Watching Australia take on India has provided six joyous and dramatic weeks Down Under. It is a series that has captured national and global attention while showing off the very best of Test cricket.

It has been a series, though, that has only served to strengthen my views on where the game is headed and what administrators should be looking at. I believe it is a four-day product with a set number of overs each day enforced, three matches minimum per series, and two divisions of six, including promotion and relegation.

I would also have three or four month-long windows per year for Tests, leaving the rest for domestic cricket and ICC events, and try to get Tests happening concurrently as much as possible to raise the drama and interest in the format.

So I was delighted to read in this masthead the ICC are considering a two-tier structure from 2027 which could see the Ashes staged twice every three years. I have been saying for a long time this is the way to keep Test cricket relevant by ensuring the best play the best as often as possible, and we get fewer mismatches.

There have been some great upsets over the last year or two – West Indies winning at the Gabba and Sri Lanka at the Oval spring to mind – but they are few and far between. Also a once-in-a-blue-moon event is what we saw at the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne, a game that produces a result having gone deep into the fifth day. As I say, generally the game is a four-day product now, with 2024 containing the fewest draws ever, the fastest scoring ever and the most regular fall of wickets ever. This series in Australia contained just 1,455 overs, and two of the Tests were over well inside three days.

There is much to iron out before any major changes are made for 2027, but there is time. Fundamentally I hold this view because I want to give fans, whether watching in the ground or on TV, what they want. After a pretty drab couple of summers in Australia and the same in England last summer, the viewing figures and attendances were through the roof during the past few weeks.

Whatever you think of those pitches in Sydney this week we had 47,000 each day and they were royally entertained, and could not take their eyes off a single ball. More than 830,000 people attended the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. That is obviously an incredible number that cannot be achieved every series, but we need to aspire to sell grounds out and the best way to do that is to have close series.

In terms of details, to make a two-tier Test Championship work, I would mandate that each team plays the same number of games in a cycle, so we do not get the bizarre situation in which England play 22 and South Africa 12, as we have had this time. Alongside the final, I would have a promotion play-off, that would see the team top of tier two host the team bottom of tier one for a place in the top flight of the next cycle. I think this would benefit the teams in tier two, because they would not be subject to dull mismatches either.