The International Cricket Conference appears to be aware that there is a difference between one-day cricket and Tests. This is the only logical conclusion that one can come to, after that august body decided to give Bangladesh and Kenya one-day status on par with the nine Test-playing nations but withheld full Test status for both countries. One does not fault this reasoning; it is apparent to all, apart from those who are totally deaf, dumb and blind (and sometimes even to these individuals), that there is a vital difference. In this light it is difficult to understand why some illusutrious cricketers of the past refuse to acknowledge this.
A lot of cricket in the subcontinent is telecast by one TV company; the same organisation also telecasts most of the cricket played by Asian countries abroad. There is a vast following for the broadcasts, despite the poor quality of both the pictures and the commentary; India and Pakistan always had a huge following and the Sri Lankan interest has grown by leaps and bounds after they won the World Cup in 1996. Suffice it to say that the telecasts reach tens of millions of people.
One repeating groove on all these telecasts is the reference to a certain set of cricket ratings. There is no mention that these ratings, sponsored by an Indian tyre manufacturer, are a purely private effort to... well, make some money, to put it bluntly. They are not sanctioned by any official body and, given the fact that they treat one-day games and Tests on par, have little logic behind them either. The ratings are used to project players from the Asian region and this leads to unnecessary expectations; for example, if one is told that player X is top of the ratings, folowed by player Y and player Z, all from the same country, the impression conveyed is that this country must necessarily be somewhere near the best in the game. Nothing could be further from the truth. All statistics provided during the telecast, apart from these ratings, are official; thus, when the ratings are flashed on-screen periodically, the impression given to the viewer is that these are as official as the rest.
The Asian countries play an abnormal amount of one-day cricket. Thus, given the law of averages, it is only to be expected that their players would always be somewhere near the top when averages are computed; add to this the Test runs they make and their chances are improved. It would then appear that these players are the best among those playing international cricket at the moment. The other countries, which play less one-day cricket, are at a distinct disadvantage. A large number of those who will never make the Test grade do well in one-day cricket and this adds to the confusion.
Why does this refusal to admit that the two forms of cricket are entirely different persist? It is difficult to understand but the ICC must take some of the blame for never having considered the periodic publication of an official list of standings for players and teams for both one-dayers and Tests. Tennis professionals have their official rankings; so do golf pros. Why should cricket not have a similar ranking system? Or is the field going to be left open to charlatans? The sad thing is that the ratings which have created all this confusion have been devised by a man who is one of the finest cricketers of all-time.
An answer already exists. Wisden's Mathew Engel has devised a ratings system to find out which country is top of the world in Test cricket. It has yet to be given official blessing. There are numerous people who have devised means of judging, separately, who is the best player in either form of the game. This is not a difficult thing to do and it would give people a true picture of what a man's worth is. All that is needed is some discussion and the adoption of a method. This would give both the game and the ICC much-needed credence.
What is the idea behind bogus ratings of this sort? The same that is behind the overkill we see on TV -- building up hype, increasing the number of viewers and drawing in more and more advertising. In the end, the TV company's owners laugh all the way to the bank. The hype they have created leaves in its wake scenes similar to that which one saw during the India-Lanka semi-final in the World Cup; crowds which have come to believe their team is filled with the likes of Superman are suddenly brought down to earth and chaos results. Ratings have their place in cricket; let them reflect an accurate picture and no true lover of the game will ever have reason to complain.