CSA score in test series against big three

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

What cricket’s brave new world will mean for South Africans was revealed yesterday in a confidential draft version of the binding future tours programme (FTP) that will be in force until 2023.

SA have been slated to play the big three - India, England and Australia - in 11 test series between 2015 and 2022. Ten of those rubbers could consist of four tests and the other, against England in 2019-20, would feature five tests. Five of the series would be played in SA.

Times Media reported on February 17 that Cricket SA (CSA) were promised four-test series against India in future in return for abandoning their opposition to an International Cricket Council’s (ICC) radical restructure that would vest most of the authority in world cricket in the hands of the countries who generate most of the game’s revenue: the big three. CSA duly voted in favour of an amended version of the plan, which was passed.

The ethics of CSA’s decision remain questionable, especially as they were the first board to speak out against the original proposal and did so vociferously by calling it “fundamentally flawed”.

But CSA’s u-turn has given them the best chance of staying in the big three’s good books, hence the generous helping of fixtures against them. Pakistan, for instance, could be awarded only two series of four tests - both against England - against the big three.

Besides the prestige of playing against India, England and Australia, broadcast rights for those series will be sold at the highest premium.

SA are also due to play four-test series in West Indies in June and July, 2020 and at home against Sri Lanka in February and March, 2021.

Of the other 14 test series SA could play between next year’s World Cup and the end of the FTP, nine are scheduled to consist of three matches and five of two.

The FTP should be finalised by the ICC board meeting in October, by which time countries must have signed bilateral agreements.

SA and the big three:

v India, four tests away(Oct-Nov, 2015)

v England, four tests at home (Dec-Jan, 2015-16)

v Australia, four tests away (Oct-Nov, 2016)

v England, four tests away (May-July, 2017)

v India, four tests at home (Jan-Feb, 2018)

v Australia, four tests at home (Feb-March, 2018)

v India, four tests away (Oct-Nov, 2019)

v England, five tests at home (Jan-Feb, 2020)

v Australia, four tests away (Nov-Dec, 2020)

v England, four tests away (July-Sept, 2021)

v India, four tests at home (Feb-March, 2022)