Rameez terms the long-term idea of ICC World Test C’ship as futile

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ISLAMABAD, Jul 25 (APP):Former skipper Rameez Raja has believed the concept of the long-term 2019–21 ICC World Test Championship, seemed futile, due to some basic flaws in its format.

“Instead of two years, the event should have been restricted to six months only. And there should have been no other event (One day Internationals or Twenty-20s) taking place during this (six-month) period,” he said while commenting upon the Test Championship, starting from early next month.
The inaugural edition of the World Test Championship will kick off from August 1, 2019 and would finish with a final in England in June 2021.

The championship would feature nine of the twelve Test playing nations, each of whom will play a Test series against six of the other eight teams. Each series will consist of between two and five matches, so although all teams will play six series (three at home and three away), they will not play the same number of Tests.
Each team will be able to score a maximum of 120 points from each series and the two teams with the most points at the end of the league stage will contest the final.

Speaking on the format of the World Test Championship, Rameez said the idea to relaunch test championship had a lot of potential but has gone in vain, due to basic level thinking of its concept. “The long-term window of two years in finding a champion loses interest in the tournament,” he said.
Rameez, who represented Pakistan during the 1980s and the 1990s, said the other fault in the tournament was that a best side can pick any low team for a series and can earn points without playing the top sides. “Each series will carry a maximum of 120 points even having three or four test matches,” he said.

Elaborating his idea of the Test Championship, Rameez, who turned a commentator in international cricket matches after retiring from cricket, said he would have created a special window of six months for test cricket championship in which each team would have played the other.

“This particular idea of Test Championship would have got maximum sponsorship and viewership as all other formats would not have been available,” he said and added that Test cricket would have improved by this initiative.

Rameez, who played international cricket for 13 years, appearing in 57 Test matches, said the main reason given for test cricket decline was lack of sponsorship and cricket boards hesitate to include tests in the series.
“The 4-day test cricket could also have been introduced as an experiment through the six months Test Championship,” he said.

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