This is not meant to be a dig at franchise and short-form leagues. They can be excellent in their own right. In a competitive global market, it is remarkable that what is essentially a new sport has become so lucrative in little more than 20 years.
Where all the different elements of cricket should be able to rub along together for the betterment of each other, we have somehow landed in a civil war, almost exclusively fuelled by the game’s administrators.
Take The Hundred as an example. English cricket is right to have a franchise league and the money due to come in should be lauded as a fantastic opportunity for the sport in this country. Instead, The Hundred has never recovered from the awful PR of its launch, a message of ‘cricket for people who do not like cricket’. It alienated those already enthralled by the game, who are now stirred to protect their bit of it.
The fabric of Test cricket has been chipped away by poor scheduling and the pursuit of dollars, pounds and rupees. If it is eradicated to nothing, leaving a revolving roadshow of leagues, cricket will be infinitely poorer for it.
An obvious solution is to separate the calendar into dedicated windows for the different formats, just like football and rugby ringfence various times for international and domestic competitions. Now it is down to cricket’s governors to show the required guts and gumption.
The irony of Test cricket being under attack is the on-field product has never been so good.