BCCI reiterates opposition to two-tier Test structure

Anurag Thakur, the Board of Control for Cricket in India's (BCCI) president, has outlined his opposition to the idea of the two-tier Test structure suggested by David Richardson, the International Cricket Council's (ICC) chief executive officer, in order to safeguard the interests of the smaller cricketing nations.

"The BCCI is against the two-tier Test system because the smaller countries will lose out and the BCCI wants to take care of them," Thakur told The New Indian Express on Wednesday (August 3). "It is necessary to protect their interests.

"In the two-tier system, they will lose out on a lot, including revenue and the opportunity to play against top teams. We don't want that to happen. We want to work in the best interests of world cricket and that is why our team plays against all the countries."

The recommendation to branch out the Test playing nations into a two-tier hierarchy - with the top tier consisting of seven and the second tier comprising of five - was put forward at the ICC's conference in Edinburgh earlier this year. Richardson had backed the move to improve the standard of the five-day game.
"Unless we can give some meaning to these series beyond the rankings and a trophy, then interest in Test cricket will continue to waver," Richardson had said. "The same applies if we allow uncompetitive Test cricket to take place too often."

Both the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) and Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) have protested the move so far. "We believe that more we play against competitive sides, the better we will get," Mahbubul Anam, the BCB vice-president, had stated. "If we didn't play against better standard sides in ODIs, we wouldn't have come this far. We were given a reality check when we were promoted to the highest level. I feel that if we go backwards, our cricket will regress."