Warning: Cricket146;s zip file has a virus attached

They are played back to back, there is a scramble to get from one centre to the next, and as a form of entertainment fall seriously short of enabling a player to establish any type of form. It may suit the TV companies schedules; in some ways, it may evens suit the ICC8217;s 10-year-cycle schedule, but is it not a form of lip service?

Have television companies become so blase about the Test product that they see the two-Test package as the ideal cost-saving way of fulfilling obligations with the boards in various countries?

Sri Lanka have played three successive two-Test series; two abroad in Australia and Pakistan and one at home against South Africa. They have embarked on a tour of New Zealand, where they are to play another similar series.

Atapattu8217;s concern is that the Tests, coming at the end of a five-ring ODI circus of slogs, has Test players hanging around inactive for a month. 8216;8216;My concern is players finding form after such a long lay-off,8217; he grumbled. 8216;8216;It affects both batsmen and bowlers. There is also the strategy factor. South Africa arrived with one idea only and that was to play for a draw in both games. To break such a deadlock requires changing the plan.8217;8217;

His complaint is that trying to bring young players through the system is far from easy. It is also a question of experience. Like India, Sri Lanka marked up a 1-0 win against the Safs. But the points from such success add little to the Test rankings unless won by an innings and plenty.

Everyone is fighting to fill number two and then raise the level and standards by challenging Australia. But a two-match Test series is condensing the game into what in IT language would be called a zip file.

Australia8217;s series with India attracted attention and sponsors and threw up a couple of new names 8212; Michael Clarke for one. To get the full benefit and excitement generated by such a match-winner you need to have a series of three or four matches.

When New Zealand8217;s Sir John Anderson devised the idea of the Test cycle, the theory was that in a period of 10 years, the Test countries would have played two home and away series. While India had a mapped-out series, the promotion of the game involving TV companies became a problem.

Unless there were big sponsorships and the competition attractive, hosting a five-match series was financially prohibitive 8212; or so some TV companies were suggesting.

Along came Peter Hutton of the Dubai-based Taj Entertainment, and that theory was consigned to the shredder. The product is always attractive and a 3- or 4-match series offers more advertising advantages.

Why have the ICC8217;s chief executives committee allowed the system to flourish at a time when shorter tours do not allow for players8217; development? Gerald Majola, when asked this at Kanpur, hinted that the BCCI was partly at fault. The scaled-down Test series was to suit its demands; Australia followed this argument when it came to countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. They were not attractive to TV audiences.

This being the case, why should players feel a form of discrimination and the ICC allow the Test cycle to become cheapened to meet an arcane demand?