Cricket Australia’s chair Mike Baird has advocated in favour of the ‘big 3’ of international cricket (Cricket Australia, Board of Control for Cricket in India and the England and Wales Cricket Board) to take the financial hit in order to allow the other cricketing nations to field their best teams in Test series. Baird’s statement comes after Australian legend Steve Waugh recently claimed the cricket administrators don’t care about Test cricket. The controversy erupted after South Africa decided to field a second string team for their Test series against New Zealand and prioritise SA20.
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Interestingly, there remains a difference between what the CA chair has been preaching and CA’s actions. Australia recently skipped Test series against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Both series could have helped the respective cricket boards of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh gain some revenue.
“If we’re in a position that national teams aren’t being prioritised, then we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Baird said, as quoted by Sydney National Herald.
“We need to support, retain and grow Test cricket, and we’re going to have to think through our priorities and part of that is how we distribute funding. I don’t think we can wait, so we have to look at how that funding is allocated, is it going to the right things, and yes one of the solutions which has been put forward is increasing Test match payments to make them more competitive. They’re all the things we need to bring forward,” Baird added.