The International Cricket Council (ICC) is to work on the formation of a Test championship over the next 12 months, chief executive officer David Richardson has revealed.
Richardson says the ICC is keen to find ways to boost revenue in Test cricket and that plans over a potential league format will be discussed in the coming months, although current television deals mean any such competition is not viable until 2019.
"We want to make a huge effort this year to put something in place that will help us sustain the value of bilateral cricket and, in particular, the profile of Test cricket," said Richardson.
"The Ashes are still extremely successful and generate lots of money and generally Test series against India will generate money, but there are a lot of series that happen that do not make much more than just to cover the costs.
"We are consulting with all our members to see what we can do to give more context and meaning to bilateral cricket, whether that is introducing a Test league or Test championship or whether it's introducing proper qualification leagues, like they do in football, for ICC events."
Richardson also confirmed that the ICC has asked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to produce a report on technology used in cricket to help find a uniform Umpire Decision Review System (DRS).
"We have engaged MIT to do research on all the DRS technologies and, in particular, the edge-detection and ball-tracking so that we've got an institute with credibility to pronounce on that," he added.
"Once we have those results, we can then review all the principles and policies around how the technology is used with the aim to produce a uniform DRS system that we can provide wherever international cricket is played.
"I can't promise that everyone will accept it as yet, that's an unknown, but once the MIT results are known hopefully that will make it easier to achieve."
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