“I’m very disturbed about this…It must be stopped now.” Legendary former West Indies cricket captain Clive Lloyd did not mince his words as he responded to a media report from Australia yesterday that talks are planned to split Test-playing teams into two divisions.
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald has suggested that Australia, England, India, and the International Cricket Council’s new chairman Jay Shah are in talks to split Test cricket into two divisions so the big three nations can play each other more often in series.”
The report noted that two tiers in Test cricket were previously floated at the ICC level in 2016, with a model where seven nations would compete in the top division and five in the second rank.
It added that any plan for a move to two divisions in Test cricket would kick in after the end of the current Future Tours Programme in 2027.
However, Lloyd does not see West Indies, currently ranked eighth out of 12 Test teams, recovering if they were confined to a tier two.
“We cannot sustain the system with the money that we are acquiring at the moment,” Sir Clive told regional and international media members on a Zoom call yesterday. “We are in a very vulnerable situation. And now you are making us even poorer by what you are doing.”
And the man who led the Caribbean team in 125 Tests in which time they became the unofficial world champions, and in 87 One-Day Internationals and back-to-back World Cup titles in 1975 and 1979 said the Windies deserved special consideration.
“We need special dispensation,” Sir Clive said. “We were the cash cows for a lot of countries over the years and think it’s obvious that people must recognise this.”
The former WI skipper said the West Indies’ historical contribution to world cricket should count for something.
“We’ve been in the ICC for nearly 100 years,” Sir Clive noted. “We have probably been the most successful Test team over the years….We worked hard for what we achieved over the period and we only have five million people….We have a great history, and now you going to tell us because of a monetary situation…we’re in this situation…”
And Sir Clive added that West Indies aside, a two-tier system would be bad for all smaller Test nations.
“It will be terrible for all those countries who worked so hard to get to Test match status and now they’ll be playing among themselves in the lower section,” he said, and asked: How are they gonna make it to the top?”
Sir Clive, a member of the ICC Hall of Fame, questioned the great financial imbalance in how the world governing body distributes its funds.
“Nobody has been able to tell me yet, why (out of) ten Test teams, three are getting 180 million and seven getting 80 million…When we were in the ascendency, we didn’t get any more money.
“We (all Test nations) should have the same set of funds per year or however often this money is shared,” he argued.