 "Reduce ODIs to World Cups, one-year of bilateral cricket post-2027: MCC")
The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which writes the rules of cricket, believes that the One Day International (ODI) cricket must be reduced after 2027 in this competitive environment of T20 leagues. This has come to the fore after the body’s World Cricket Committee (WCC) gave its recommendations in a meeting held at the Lord’s cricket ground in England on Tuesday, July 11.
The Mike Gatting-led committee said, “A scarcity of ODI cricket would increase the quality, achieved by removing bilateral ODIs, other than in the one year preceding each World Cup. This would, as a consequence, also create much-needed space in the global cricketing calendar."
Gatting, the former England captain, is the outgoing chairman of the committee that believes that change should come after 2027 as the Future Tours Program (FTP), which decides the schedule of all the international tournaments and tours for four years, is already out for 2023-2027.
Ben Stokes quitting ODIs and players like Trent Boult and Jason Roy ready to forfeit their national contracts to make suer they play T20 leagues round the year, has forced the MCC to think about such measures.
WCC also recommended that the International Cricket Council (ICC), which is responsible for the administration of the game globally, must come out with an audit of how much it costs the host nation to play a Test match. The question of only the big three (India-England-Australia) earning from the longest format has been raised for quite some time. The audit will help find the answer to that question believes the WCC.
“This audit of operational costs [of hosting a Test match] versus commercial return would help the ICC identify nations in need of support in order to sustain a Test match programme," said a release by the MCC regarding the aforementioned audit.