June 12, 2008	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 07, 1429

MELBOURNE, June 11: Cricket Australia’s (CA) proposed Test championship could include a quadrennial trophy presentation ceremony and a points system, with allowances for bonuses.

CA has been pushing hard to revive the sanctity of Test cricket and proposed a global Test Championship.

This has gathered a momentum after state teams Victoria and Western Australia qualified to would play for $5 million inaugural Twenty20 Champions League in September or October.

And now steps are being taken for a Test championship and discussions also being taken place about the viability of a bonus points system, which would provide incentive for the teams to perform and discourage negative cricket from the popularity of Twenty20, said a report in The Age.

The move might irk traditionalists, but the administrators believe it could help enliven the game, giving context to each match played.

“There is still a lot of spadework that needs to be done,” former Indian cricket board president Inderjit Singh Bindra said.

“The form, format and frequency are all part of the current discussion. It has been discussed by a number of countries, and there is hope this might work.”

But there are several stumbling blocks before the proposed Test championship takes a final shape. One of them being Australia’s uncertainty over the proposed format that could affect its “icon series”, including the Ashes and Border-Gavaskar Trophy.—Agencies