The Black Caps’ fixture list is best understood as a glimpse of the future – not just for the country, but for the wider cricketing world

Meet New Zealand, the ghost Test cricket team. From March 2017 to October 2018, the side will play a paltry four Tests in 18 months. In the same period Joe Root, one of Kane Williamson’s biggest rivals for the mantle of the best Test batsman in the world, will play 21 Tests for England.



Understandably, senior players are privately bemoaning the paucity of five-day action. The little Test cricket that is being played is also being pushed to the margins of early December and the end of March, a soft flatbread to the 13 ODIs and 10 T20s that fill the meaty chunk of New Zealand’s summer.

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In part this is all a quirk, more a reflection of irregularities in cricket’s playing schedule – unusually, New Zealand didn’t have a Test tour last winter – than any grand design. Yet really New Zealand’s summer fixture list is best understood as a glimpse of the future – not just for the country, but for the wider cricketing world.

This summer, New Zealand Cricket chose to scrap one Test against the West Indies, previously designated to be a three-match series. “It’s fair to say that hosting a Test match in New Zealand before Christmas is financially a challenge,” says David White, the organisation’s chief executive. It is a window into the economic obstacles to playing Test matches. For home boards, most Tests make a net loss of over US$500,000 – particularly significant given the sport’s lack of equitable revenue sharing. New Zealand Cricket’s annual revenue is US$35m; Cricket Australia’s is US$270m, almost eight times as much. For countries like New Zealand – really, all bar Australia, England and India, the sport’s economic Big Three – financial realities militate against staging more Tests.

And so New Zealand’s summer schedule is a harbinger of what is to come. White envisages that future summers will involve two tourists, each playing two Tests, three ODIs and three T20Is. “Two-three-three times two is our model,” he says. During New Zealand’s run of seven Test series unbeaten from 2013-15, coach Mike Hesson said his side had “earned the right” to play longer Test series. Now it is conceivable that they might not play a three-match Test series, let alone anything longer, ever again.

The same is true for other nations, too. The ICC is close to agreeing new leagues in Test and ODI cricket, beginning in 2019, introducing clear consequences – reaching the World Test final, or automatic World Cup qualification – that tours currently lack. Under the plans, series would ordinarily consist of two Test matches – though boards would be free to play additional games, meaning that the Ashes could remain a five-match series – and three ODIs. This being cricket, the nine teams in the Test league would only play six opponents over two years – three at home and three away – because of the overcrowded schedule and India’s unwillingness to pay Pakistan. New Zealand would only be guaranteed an average of six Tests a year, although White says that the board will endeavour to play around eight a year.

The new Test schedule reflects the format’s challenge to be commercially sustainable. Other things being equal, at the start of the decade broadcasters apportioned a worth of three points to each Tests, two to each ODI, and 0.75 to each T20 international. Today, each T20I is worth three points, ODIs are still worth two points – but Tests only one. All the while, domestic T20 club competitions are thriving. This month, broadcasting rights to the Indian Premier League were sold for four times the annual amount of the current contract for India’s home internationals: a seminal moment in cricket tilting from being a nation v nation game to more of a club v club sport.

So the international game, especially Test and ODI cricket, risks being cannibalised by T20 leagues. White believes the belated introduction of international leagues will make fans more inclined to watch, including games between other countries which will affect their position in the table. “If you’ve got context and narrative around all fixtures it’s going to add commercial value. There’s no question about that.” Heath Mills, chief executive of the New Zealand Cricket Players’ Association, says that, “We will likely end up playing less Test cricket” but “by playing less it could well become more valuable”.

“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory,” the American columnist Franklin Pierce Adams said. The same is true with New Zealand’s past in Test cricket: the team has always endured long fallow periods in their schedule. The 1980s team of Crowe and Hadlee played just 59 Tests all decade; in 2007, the team played two Tests. Generally, the side has played around eight Tests a year – 81 in the 1990s, and 80 in the 2000s. Though England have so far played 31 more Tests than New Zealand in the 2010s, New Zealand’s tally, of 66 Tests, will end up approaching their previous decade record of 81.

New Zealand Cricket is regarded as one of the world’s most astute boards even if, given the competition, that accolade feels like being one of Henry VIII’s preferred wives. Their template for internationals – the 2-3-3x2 structure – is at least a coherent answer to international cricket’s existential questions: how to fit everything in, in a way that fans can understand and gives matches proper context? And so, in New Zealand and beyond, a future beckons in which Test cricket must know its place.