cricket – Beesquared

Test cricket is about to be restyled in a move that organizers hope will up the viability of the longest and most esteemed form of the game.

Starting in 2019, nine of the 12 countries eligible to play in test matches will meet in three home and three away series over the two years that count toward the championship, the International Cricket Council announced on Friday.

Organizers said the trial would improve competition and enliven test cricket, which has struggled to engage fans who have turned increasingly to matches that accelerate play.

“The trial is exactly that, a trial, in the same way day-night tests and technology have been trialled,” Dave Richardson, the ICC’s chief executive, told reporters.

ICC Director Giles Clarke speaks about Test cricket after the ICC meetings in Auckland. pic.twitter.com/r2WSOY8A0q

— ICC Media (@ICCMediaComms) October 13, 2017

Each series will run between two and five matches over five days, with the top two teams to meet in a final scheduled for June 2021. The countries — the trial will exclude Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland at the outset — will play three home and three away series over the two years that count toward the championship.

Starting in 2021, the ICC also will introduce a league comprised of 13 teams that will face off in one-day international matches. The ODI series, which will feature the 12 test nations plus the winner of the current world cricket league championship, will determine which teams qualify for the World Cup in India two years later.

Richardson added that while the concept remains a trial, it should help Ireland and Afghanistan, which earned test status in June, to hone their skills and come up to speed with the other test nations faster.

At JFK this week I passed a billboard for a financial firm that depicted a ball shaped like an American football but flatter at each end, like a rugby ball, with the pattern of a soccer ball.

The mythical mass served as metaphor for globalization, which two items in the news this week suggest is accelerating when it comes to sports.

First is a cricket match slated for Saturday at Citi Field in New York, the first of three exhibitions to be played in the U.S. this month by teams of retired all-stars. The other is an announcement by the NFL that it will play at least three games in London in each of the next five seasons after three contests there this year.

The moves mark a quickening of activity by two sports that have yet to arrive in the U.S. and U.K., respectively, on a national level. Of course, cricket has billions of fans around the world. Test matches between England and Pakistan, and between India and South Africa, are among the top events this weekend in all of sport.

World's most valuable bus. #Allstars2015 #AllStars #cricketallstars #cricket pic.twitter.com/N1XMDNk7K3

— Daily Times (@dailytimespak) November 6, 2015

The matches in the states will feature Sachin Tendulkar, who retired from the Indian national team two years ago after scoring 15,921 runs in 200 test matches, or 2,000 more than his closest rival; and Shane Warne, an Australian who retired in 2013 and ranks second of all time in wickets taken (getting a batter out) in test matches.

Tendulkar, 42, who may be the greatest batsman of all time, and Warne, 46, among the best bowlers ever, will helm opposing teams of former greats from Pakistan, India, England, South Africa, the West Indies, and Sri Lanka. “The vision is to globalize cricket,” Tendulkar told the Times. “Somewhere we need to start.”

That could be America, which in 1844 hosted the first international cricket match, between the U.S. and Canada. Today roughly 35,000 Americans play cricket, according to the United States of America Cricket Association.

The grounds at Citi Field will include a pitch that organizers of the matches have trucked from Indiana, where it was grown for the occasion by Mark Perham, the former groundsman at Eden Park, the largest stadium in New Zealand. The pitcher’s mound, which had a workout in the recently concluded World Series, will be lowered so as not to present a hazard for cricketers.

American football comes to rugby grounds

Separately, the NFL announced on Tuesday it has leased Twickenham Stadium, which normally houses rugby and recently hosted the sport’s world cup, for each of the next three seasons.

That brings to three the number of venues the league will use to host games in London between now and 2020. In addition to Twickenham, which holds 82,000 people, the league will play at least two games a year at Wembley Stadium over the coming five years.

The NFL also is slated to play two games a year at a stadium being built for Tottenham Hotspur when it is completed in 2018.

According to the league, the three games it hosted this season at Wembley averaged 83,777 fans apiece, a crowd roughly equivalent to the capacity of MetLife Stadium.

The push by the NFL to expand internationally will extend south as well. The league is expected to play at least one game in Mexico City in 2016 and says it is exploring matchups in Germany and Brazil.