Test Cricket - Martin Crowe To The Rescue?

Kiwi Martin Crowe has stepped forward with a plan to "rescue" Test cricket by conducting a Championship of knock-out games over a year between all playing nations. The games would be played under lights, using a pink ball, with quarter-finals played across the world and the final to be played at Lords.

This, he believes, will bring the crowds back to the longest form of the game.

Of course, TV rights remain a problem. The pink ball remains a problem. Overcoming the objections of the "real" money in cricket remains a problem. I remain a problem.

Crowds are down? So what? Why is it when crowds diminish cricket officials always think we have to change the game? The problem with cricket is we have allowed grubby little businessmen on the sub-continent to rise to positions of power and influence and dictate terms in the game. Burned by Packer thirty years ago, the ICC and member boards have bent over for the IPL and even smoked cigarettes with it afterwards. The problem with cricket is we have too much of it. We have flooded the market and given it too much choice instead of promoting what we have. The problem with cricket is we have allowed players to become an undisputed power and unseemly behaviour is met with a wet slap on the wrist with a dead fish. Reference Harbajhan and Symonds for further information. The problem is with cricket is we no longer revere the game, we blindly worship its gladiators without rebuke and allow its administrators to stay in the counting house, stacking rupes/dollars/pounds to the ceiling.

Marty wants us to find heroes? We've just seen another great Ashes series which held our interest through the winter nights and it seemed to be chock full of heroes to me and none of them in coloured clothing, with numbers on their back or floodlight. You don't spell cricket b-a-s-e-b-a-l-l. The Twenty20 genii has been let from the bottle and the ICC is still wondering on its three wishes.

Golden rule reminder to the ICC and all of its wonderkind committees ... if you sleep with tarts you wake up with a rash!

Read the SMH article through this link. http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/cricket/we-need-a-champion--the-scheme-to-rescue-tests/2009/09/20/1253384904005.html