West Indian great slams plans for two-tier Test system

West Indies’ two-time ODI World Cup-winning captain Clive Llyod has lambasted the plans for a two-tier Test system.

Reports about the system emerged during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy between Australia and India which attracted a huge audience.

According to the two-tier system, India, Australia, England, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and New Zealand will play each other.

While the second tier will have the West Indies, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Ireland and Zimbabwe.

The system is aimed at providing top Test-playing nations with more chances to play against each other in a short span of time.

However, legendary West Indies cricketer Clive Llyod has expressed his concerns about the impact of the system on financially struggling cricket boards.

“I think it will be terrible for all those countries who work so hard to get to Test match status and now they’ll be playing among themselves in the lower section,” Lloyd said in an interview with a West Indian media outlet.

The former West Indies skipper also mentioned former ICC chairman Greg Barclay’s suggestion that the West Indies should be disbanded and play as individual countries.

“We (West Indies) have a great history and now you’re going to tell us because of a monetary situation, (we should be disbanded),” he said.

Clive Llyod urged the ICC to provide monetary assistance to cricket boards to help them improve their structure.

“You could imagine they’re talking about dismantling the West Indies, that is not the way to go. The way to go is to give them (West Indies and other teams) the same amount of money so they can improve their facilities, get better systems in place so that they can improve their cricket,” he said.

Llyod also posed questions on the ‘poorly organised’ structure of the World Test Championship (WTC) cycle.

“It’s not well organised as such because if I am in a Test team, I want to play cricket so I can qualify for that system,” said Clive Lloyd.