English cricketing exceptionalism has a long history. Until the 1950s, England paid its Ashes Test players highly, a sign that England did not attach equal importance to all international matches. Until the 1960s, England regularly sent weaker teams when touring countries other than Australia. England’s abysmal record in one-day international cricket from 1992 to 2015 was underpinned by a sense that one-day international cricket was less important than Test cricket, an attitude that was out of sync with the rest of the world.
English cricket culture continues to be driven by a tendency to view single-series performance as a barometer — “I think we define ourselves too much by winning or losing the Ashes,” former England director of cricket Andrew Strauss said in 2015 — and little has changed since the World Test Championship began five years ago.
In 2021, then-head coach Chris Silverwood framed the series against India – one of England’s biggest rivalries and part of the World Test Championship – as simply a warm-up for the tour of Australia. “We have to perform well in these Tests to get to where we want to be against Australia,” Silverwood said. England did not perform well in Tests and then lost 4-0 in the Ashes.
English cricket might act as if we don’t need a World Test Championship, but we do need Test cricket. And despite its shortcomings (the uneven schedule, the arcane points system, the league lasting almost two years), the Test Championship is the best solution administrators have yet devised to protect the vitality of the format around the world.
Outside of the three more fortunate nations who can afford to play longer series, two-match series have long been the norm. Not since South Africa hosted Pakistan in 2019 has a series comprised of three Test matches without Australia, England or India playing. For the majority of Test-match nations, the World Test Championship provides the central focus of five-day cricket – the backdrop to the matches and the chance to win a world title.
For Australia and India, the Test Championship is now also essential in assessing their teams. As Cummins and Kohli made clear, both teams view a two-year Test cycle as a failure if they do not play in and preferably win a final. The Ashes will always be at the heart of England’s Test ambitions, but it should also be part of a wider aim of regularly reaching and winning World Test Championship finals.
England considers itself the country with the highest support for Test cricket, yet while lamenting that other countries do not treat the Test game with as much respect, they can barely even pretend to be interested in the five-day game that is the only world trophy to be won.