Zaka Ashraf, Sharad Pawar and Haroon Lorgat pose for photographers at the Dubai cricket stadium in the Gulf emirate on November 14, 2011.—AFP

DUBAI: Cricket’s World Test Championship will not begin until 2017, International Cricket Council chief executive Haroon Lorgat announced on Monday.

“I am afraid that is no longer going to happen in 2013,” Lorgat told reporters at the second Pakistan v Sri Lanka ODI here.

“At the last (ICC) board meeting we decided the first opportunity to play the Test championship is 2017. I am disappointed it is not going to take place sooner but it is a reality of the commitments we have already got through to 2015.

“We attempted to switch the [scheduled one-day] Champions Trophy to become a Test Championship but that is not going to be possible.”

Those commitments include a contract with broadcaster ESPN STAR Sports through to the end of the one-day World Cup in 2015, as well as contracts with sponsors. When those contracts were agreed, they were based on a one-day cricket event taking place in 2013. That will now be the Champions Trophy.

The announcement is a blow to Test cricket’s brand, which is already struggling to draw crowds and achieve a place within many countries’ schedules in the face of the new popularity of Twenty20 cricket.—Reuters