One step forward, two steps back

The two-day executive committee meeting of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in Dubai was, to put it mildly, one of the biggest examples of what you call one step forward, two steps back.

The ICC, in recent times, had quite often been caught in a dilemma of whether to go on the front foot or back. Take the case of the proposal of lesser teams in the 2015 World Cup and then going back on it, and now the use of technology and of course the idea of a World Test Championship. Surely, the world governing body of the game ought to have been more decisive on such key and sensitive issues.

This time around, the task of justifying their retrograde step regarding the DRS or the ambivalent stance about the Champions Trophy was a tall order even for someone as articulate as it's CEO, Haroon Lorgat. Let's quote the ICC CEO on this: "Although the DRS improves correct umpire decisions by around five per cent and correct any blatant errors, there are some who are not convinced by it's reliability."

No prizes for guessing, the ‘some' stands for only India, as no other board has voiced any kind of concern with the experiment. It was only in last June that the chief executives' committee of the ICC had made the use of DRS mandatory for Tests and one-dayers, an idea which never found favour with the all powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) — more so after a few controversial decisions in India's recent tour of England threw up the inadequacies of the ‘Hot Spot' technology.

A Utopian idea

No less ambiguous is their stance of introducing the Test Championship vis-à-vis the Champions Trophy. If the governing body of the game is not certain of tackling the commercial challenges of doing away with a proven one-day event like the Champions Trophy, then there was perhaps no palpable reason to talk up the chances of hosting a premier Test event in less than two years' time.

We all know that Test cricket is the pinnacle of this sport, but to build a championship around it seems more of a utopian idea — at least in the current climate. It's been more than a decade since a certain Mr Jagmohan Dalmiya, then the head honcho of the Asian cricket body, ventured to start a Asian Test Championship and spoke about it culminating into a World Test Championship.

The Asian event was shelved after only one half-baked edition, and so was the idea of a World Test Championship. Mind you, those were pre-T20 days and the cricket fatigue that we witness today hadn't really set in.

However, even if such a championship has to wait until 2017 as the indications are now, it would be worth the wait.