Indian journalist thought of world Test championship 60 years ago!
June 07, 2023 20:27
Mohammed Shami in action in the WTC final
As India and Australia battle it out at the Oval to be crowned the world Test champion, for G Rajaraman, 'while the focus remains largely on the present, it is hard to stop the mind from diving into the past'.
That's because, 'each time a World Test Championship Final is played, I cannot help but recall the first time I browsed through the collection of clippings from Sport & Pastime magazine kept by N Ganesan, my sports-journalist father. It was in those pages that I discovered that the idea for the World Test Championship had first been floated by SK Gurunathan, noted cricket writer in the post-independence years, as early as 1962,' Rajaraman writes in revsportz.in.
'Writing in the June 9, 1962 issue of Sport & Pastime, Gurunathan suggested a programme of Test matches in which all teams would meet on a league basis, to help spot the real cricket champions of the world. He even designed a schedule in which all Test-playing teams, barring South Africa, would play one another between October 1962 and September 1963,' he writes.
So what did Gurunathan have in mind?
'The plan I have in mind is that the six countries (I have purposely omitted South Africa), England, Australia, West Indies, India, Pakistan and New Zealand compete for a World Championship, each playing the other either at home or away between October of one year and September of the next,' Gurunathan wrote in Sport & Pastime.
'Now, many years later, Gurunathan's idea has found resonance, and we are about to experience the second ICC World Test Championship final. Unlike the 1912 tournament that drew few fans to matches not featuring the home team, you can be sure that The Oval will be packed with fans supporting India and Australia,' Rajaraman writes, here.
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