Michael Vaughan bats for promotion-relegation system in Tests

Former England skipper Michael Vaughan has given his opinion on how to take Test cricket forward. The opinion or the idea comes after England thrashed a hapless Sri Lankan side in the first Test at Headingley inside three days and by 88 runs.

“In Test match cricket you have to get the better teams playing against each other more consistently. If you look at this series, England against Sri Lanka, it is like a Premier League football team playing against a Division One team over five weeks. It’s a mismatch,” Vaughan told BBC Radio on Thursday (May 26).

Vaughan suggested that should this system be implemented, it would grow Test cricket rather drastically. “I would have promotion and relegation. I would have three divisions of four teams. I would play each team home and away. Two Tests home and (two) away, so four Tests for each team, that would (make the total count) twelve.”

The Ashes-winning skipper also added that there should be some sort of incentive or award at the end of it all. “Test match cricket needs a meaning other than the Ashes. Apart from the Ashes, the India-Pakistan series which generally doesn’t take place these days, there is not a great deal of meaning to bilateral series.”

The new point system format doesn’t seem to impress the former England skipper. “We have the points system brought in by Andrew Strauss, four points for a win. I didn’t hear that at the end of the Test match, but England has gone four points ahead. That is going to take a little bit of getting used to. Until, they get promotion and relegation, you are going to have such (mismatched) series,” said the former captain who also took a dig at the recently concluded Australia-West Indies series.

“Australia versus West Indies in the winter, don’t think anyone watched that. It was garbage. We knew exactly what the result is going to be. It was a complete mismatch.”

At the end of the day, Vaughan believed that an ODI series following a Test series was the only consolation for cricketers in the modern era. “In One-Day cricket, Sri Lanka can always surprise you. So that could even itself out. This Test series; it’s going to be England all the way.”