A T20 Champions League is coming, and so is crunch time for Test cricket
Test cricket's future and a possible split into two divisions may also be decided by the end of the year, after the ICC formalised a working group to reshape the game's calendar from 2027 onwards, according to two sources with knowledge of confidential discussions.
There is now a distinct possibility that the number of Test playing countries may be capped, on the basis that only a few currently make money from the game's oldest format and that many nations do not have the resources to support the systems required for developing competitive Test teams.
Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg and Richard Gould, CEO of the England and Wales Cricket Board, will be among the eight members of the calendar working group, alongside the ICC's new chief executive Sanjog Gupta.
It will be expected to present interim findings and recommendations to the ICC board, chaired by india's Jay Shah, before the end of this year.
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Gupta, the former head of sport at the Indian broadcast giant JioStar, was involved in the recent report into cricket's calendar by the global players' body. But he has also expressed the view that the market will dictate how much Test and international cricket is played in the future.
'You have to make hard choices,' Gupta said on the MCC's World Cricket Connects panel at Lord's in 2023. 'And there are very clear indicators of what fans want. There is enough data to suggest what direction the game is going in.
'If you continue to serve a product that no one wants, one – that product will continue to suffer; and, two – the ecosystem around the product will continue to suffer. Blackberry disappeared at some point. It was a device that all of us had, it was a device that all of us were in the bait of using, then it disappeared, and it was replaced by another product.'
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