Sorry, but they can't be official

James Sutherland, the chief executive of Cricket Australia, said he was "thrilled" when the International Cricket Council announced that Australia had won the bid to host the ICC's new Super Series next October. The prospect of the then top-ranking Test and one-day teams taking on a Rest of the World side immediately had Sutherland - and cricket fans around the world - licking their lips in anticipation of some top-flight cricket. But, in his excitement, Sutherland seems to have got carried away. He wants official Test and one-day status for the Super Series matches - but that, the way things stand at the moment, is simply not possible.

Let's take a look at the ICC's own rulebook. Point 3 of their Regulations covers the "Classification of Test matches". The definition is: "Any match of not more than five days' scheduled duration played between teams selected by Full Members as representative of their member countries and accorded the status of a Test match by the ICC ... Only Full Members of ICC can participate in Test matches."

For a start, the Super Series game is scheduled to be played over six days. Secondly, it is going to be between one full-member country and the Rest of the World. This does not fit the ICC's own definition of Test status. First-class status is certainly possible, for games of far less serious intent have been granted this in the past. To name a few: Smokers v Non-smokers, North of Thames v South of Thames ... and if you want to be cruel, Canada v America.

When you come to the three scheduled one-dayers the roadblock is similar. Section 2 (Sub-Section B) says that a match is deemed a one-day international if it meets the following qualifications: "(i) All matches played in the official World Cup competition, including matches involving Associate Member countries. (ii) All matches played between the Full Member countries of ICC as part of an official tour itinerary. (iii) All matches played as part of an official tournament between Full Member countries, at an ICC-approved Associate or Affiliate Member venue."

Again, these World XI matches don't fall into any of those categories.

Even if the ICC was to ignore its own rules and regulations, it might run into problems. Granting these matches official Test and one-day status will open up a can of worms. The ICC has ruled for years that the 1970 England v Rest of the World series, and the 1971-72 Australia v World XI matches cannot be given Test status. In both cases the matches were of a high standard, involving top cricketers of the time, and the games in England, at least, were marketed as proper Test matches. And what of the SuperTests in Australia in the Packer years, which bizarrely aren't even rated as first-class? Surely each of those has as valid a claim to Test status as the forthcoming Super Series.

The one man who would be overjoyed if this were to happen would be England's Alan Jones. John Arlott wrote in Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1984 that Jones "must be [one of] the finest cricketers of the postwar - or perhaps any other - period never to win a Test cap." For several years Wisden listed Jones as a Test cricketer, based on the fact that he played once for England against the Rest of the World in 1970, but then stopped doing so. He'd be delighted if he were suddenly told, at the age of 66, that he was a Test cricketer after all.

However, the road to granting full Test status to irregular matches is ridden with problems, which have probably not been thought through by Mr Sutherland in his excitement. One of India's leading cricket statisticians immediately put his finger on one: "Can you imagine what problems we will have with the records? We will have Tendulkar in Tests for India, in Tests for the Rest of the World, and for who knows who else in the future [possibly even against the Rest of the World]. It'll be a statistician's nightmare ..."

What with the chucking controversy and the Zimbabwe crisis, you might think the ICC has enough problems to sort out without creating another, albeit far less significant, mess of its own.