The Top Edge

  After two long years, the inaugural World Test Championship has finally to come to an end. It started off with England and Australia taking on each other in the first of many tests in the league. The league comprised nine teams and was down to two countries, Indian and New Zealand, hustling to be crowned as the first ever World Test Champions. New Zealand eventually beat India quite comprehensively to seal the victory by 8 wickets and they are now the first World Test Champions. This was India's third ICC event, played under the captaincy of Virat Kohli. Under his captaincy, India reached the final of the 2017 Champions Trophy and the semi-final of 2019 Cricket World Cup. Unfortunately, India were outplayed in both the knockout games. Adding to fan's misery, India have now lost the World Test Championship final as well. The common pattern in India's loss in all the three knockout games has been the batsmen's inability to play swing bowling well. Indian top order...

  World cricket has a very packed calendar all over the year with all sorts of bilateral and multi team tournaments filled up. According to the FTP, every test playing nation has to play one another once in every two years. Although, the FTP is designed by the ICC, the number of matches played on a tour is more or less decided by the respective national boards. As a result, we see an unevenness in the number of matches being played between the teams. The sole reason behind the imbalance is the revenue generated by conduction of a series. More monetarily rewarding a series is, more is the number of matches being played on the tour. The model of The Big Three was adopted by the ICC in 2014. The model gave a major chunk of ICC's revenue to three countries viz. India, Australia and England. The model was introduced to reward the three nations for their contribution to the ICC in terms of revenue generation. The three boards generate more than 50% of world cricket's revenue with Ind...

  Over the past decade, the T20 format has grown exponentially in its fan base and has proved to be the major revenue generator for cricket boards all over the world. A vital contribution to the revenue comes from the T20 leagues set up by the boards. Almost every test playing nation, today, has its own T20 league. The IPL, BBL, CPL are just to name a few. Among the T20 leagues played worldwide, the brand value of the IPL is unmatched at the moment and there are no second thoughts about it. Currently, the league consists of 60 matches and is run over close to two months and acquires about one sixth of the calendar year. The leagues have not only earned the cricket boards a large amount of money but have also produced some high quality young cricketers who go on to represent their respective countries in the future. These tournaments provide an exposure to young cricketers and give them a stage to showcase their talent to the world. Interacting and learning from experienced inte...