The new blueprint for the future timetabling of international matches that the International Cricket Council unveiled today after two days of Executive Board meetings in Melbourne can not make its entrance at a better time. While the authors of the document identify, as their primary concern, the replacement of the ad hoc system that currently governs the scheduling of Test matches, any revision to the existing structure is welcome.

The Ashes Tradition Stays Photo CricInfo

Why? Because, as the just-concluded Australian season has demonstrated, international cricket has become imbalanced. The gap between the small number of high-achieving nations and their weaker rivals has grown to the point that it simply can not continue to be sustained. Nor tolerated. As happily and in as high a number as Australian audiences have come flocking through the turnstiles this season, it is hard to remember a more horribly one-sided summer of international cricket in the history of the game. It would be difficult to maintain optimism about the sport's future if things were to be permitted simply to run their course.

Australia is a brilliant team, has brilliant self-belief, is brilliant to watch. And there is no reason to conclude, in the short term at least, that its followers won't quite rightly come to witness more of its domination. But, ultimately, even it and even they will suffer from a lack of meaningful competition.

The implementation of the new Test programme - the brainchild chiefly of New Zealand Cricket supremo, Christopher Doig - will make for a co-ordinated calendar of matches which will allow each of the ten current Test playing nations to meet one other both at home and away at least once over every five year period. In so doing, it will facilitate the development of a formal World Championship of Test cricket, an idea which has been at the heart of discussions to add greater meaning to results in the five-day arena for many years now.

Long term preparation and planning will also be boosted and the Test fraternity's newer members, such as Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, will receive more regular fixtures and more opportunities to raise the standard and profile of the sport in their countries.

It is an idea which already seems to have the backing of at least one of the game's biggest contemporary names.

"There has got to be a bit more support for countries like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh," affirmed Australian captain, Steve Waugh, at the end of his team's stunning clean sweep of the 2000-01 home summer.

"They have been given Test and one-day international status. But they seem to be left alone once they've been given that status."

"They haven't got the support systems around them and it's very hard to improve when you're left to your own devices," he added.

"If we want the game to expand and to stay strong, then these countries have got to get a lot more support."

This new format, which will still allow for long established and traditional elements of the old system (such as regular Ashes series between England and Australia) to be preserved, will essentially take effect from May, when England begins a home series against Pakistan.

In the wake of what has been witnessed in this part of the world this summer, such change can only be positive. Within the space of the last twelve months alone, there has been enough negativity in cricket to last us a lifetime.

© 2001 CricInfo Ltd