The coronavirus has forced to postpone many recent cricket matches, including halting the inaugural ICC World Test Championship (2019-21). The legendary Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar has recently come up with a solution to handle the unfortunate delay of the ICC World Test Championship.
To make the Test cricket competitive and interesting, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has started the World Test Championship. In the inaugural edition of this tournament, the top nine-ranked Test teams are participating, where all the teams will play the Test series against six different teams, three at home and other three at away. All the matches of this tournament have point-system and at the end of this league stage, the top two teams of the points table will qualify for the one-off final of this tournament. Lord’s (London) will host the final of the inaugural ICC World Test Championship from 10th to 14th June 2021.
While the inaugural ICC World Test Championship has started with the great support from the Test cricket fans, the coronavirus has put a big barrier of this tournament. Already some of the Test series have been postponed in this pandemic and some other upcoming Test series are also in danger to face the same fate.
In this crisis, Sachin Tendulkar has brought out the example of the Olympics 2020 story and advised to figure out a window to organise all the remaining Test series of this tournament, including the postponed.
Tendulkar told IANS, “I think so (need permutations and combinations to be worked out). With regards to the World Test Championship, if you see, the Olympics also has been postponed but it will still be called 2020 Olympics even though it will be now held in 2021. They are still calling it 2020 Olympics and in that way, we need to figure out a window where you know all these games which would have ideally happened at this time, how can we accommodate them in the future and yet continue with this championship.”
If you have started something, it needs to be completed in the best and fairest manner: Sachin Tendulkar
Talking about handling this crisis, Tendulkar has talked about to provide fair chances to all the teams by extending the time limit a bit.
He added, “To start afresh would be a big thing. And if you have started something, it needs to be completed in the best and fairest manner where we are able to accommodate all the remaining matches and give everyone a fair chance. We could extend the time limit a bit because these tours also aren’t cancelled totally, they have been postponed. So, along with the tours, the championship also gets postponed.”