Former English player Mark Butcher gave his verdict on the World Test Championship (WTC) which is being played for a two-year cycle saying that it has made Test cricket worse.
South Africa recently announced their 14-man squad for the Test tour of New Zealand with as many as seven uncapped players due to the unavailability of senior players as they would be engaged in franchise cricket during that time.
The decision to include seven uncapped players came as a surprise to many and Former Australia’s captain Steve Waugh called that a “defining moment in the death of Test cricket” and many others also weighed in on the matter.
Butcher, who represented England in 71 Test matches, believed that the effort to make Test cricket more interesting by introducing WTC has only made things worse.
“One of the things that’s made this even more inevitable is something that they’ve done to try to salvage Test match cricket, which is the World Test Championship,” Butcher said on the Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast.
“The point is that your bilateral series have to capture the imagination of the fans and the players of the two countries that are playing in it, and then the wider cricket watching public. And the only way they are that is if they are competitive. And that’s how it always was.
“Test match series were and Test matches in and of themselves, single games, were important events. The idea that you widen the whole thing out to sort of span three years and blah blah blah, some series are worth this, some series are worth that, some teams can’t be asked this week – it makes it even more nebulous. The only effort that’s been made to kind of try and keep it relevant, I think, has made it worse.”
It must be noted that after Pakistan lost the three-match Test series against Australia and India managed a 1-1 draw in a two-match series. The Kangaroos claimed the top position in the ICC Men's Test Team Rankings.
Australia now leads the WTC table with 56.25 percentage points, surpassing India, who are now second-ranked with 54.16 percentage points.
Pakistan, now at No.6, witnessed a significant decrease in percentage points – from 45.83 before the SCG Test to 36.66 after the defeat.