In a bid to change the format of the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final, Australian spinner Nathan Lyon has made an unusual suggestion of playing it in three matches across various countries.
According to Lyon, a multi-match final would suit the real nature of Test cricket better than a one-off game that can decide the fate of a series by a single session.
“It is not about tournament style matches. You cannot just be scraping through into the semi-finals while losing two or more games. For these two years you must be consistent,” said him.
“One thing that I would like to see is possibly having World Test Championship Final in three-match series instead. This may improve things since one may lose a match during one session where as opposed to three-match series, which gives teams opportunity to come back and show their might winning all three matches by 0-3 score line. Anyway we are time poor and its tough but it will be changed,” ICC quoted Lyon.
“You can maybe have one in England, one in India and one in Australia so that you have all the different conditions but of course there’s always a timetable attached to it. And I don’t think we’re getting on MCG in the middle of August anyway just to put it out there.”
The veteran spinner further emphasized that WTC format gets rid of dead rubbers for each series, making sure that every match is important and competitive.
“Yeah right! The best way to put it is (World Test Championship) has reached its high for Test cricket. People say at times it’s a dead rubber when you go 2-0 up in three-match series or whatever. However, for me they’ve never been such things before, but now I mean you can still earn some points out there.
Last year losing to West Indies at Gabba was boring us badly Keith Elkington claimed. “But then again, I would go to New Zealand and claim a victory away from home which is very major challenge in Test cricket,” he added.
Lyon once again compared World Test Championship (WTC) with the cricket World Cup by emphasizing its position as an eminent long-format contest.
“It’s huge. For me, the World Test Championship is quite like the World Cup and this is truly big World Cup. You need to perform excellently over two years in every match when you are pitted against elite players for prolonged durations,” he continued.
