A 12-Team WTC: Test Cricket's Door Is Opening, but Where Is the Money?

Hook: Clouds over Durban, a Kingsmead pitch, and one sentence

Cloud cover over Kingsmead is usually good news for seam bowlers. At this coastal ground, the ball moves a little more, the batsman's elbow stiffens a little sooner. But for the past few days, the biggest story at Kingsmead has not been on the pitch. It has been in a conference room beside it. Ahead of the first Test of Australia's tour of South Africa, Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg faced reporters and said things that are not really match-week news. They are an administrative statement about the entire structure of Test cricket, one that had no business hiding behind the opening day of a Test series.

Greenberg said the World Test Championship could grow from nine teams to twelve. Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland could join that list. The headline made it sound settled, waiting only for an announcement. But when I read his full remarks line by line, I found a crack: Greenberg himself said the change is "not imminent for the next iteration." In other words, there is a gap between the headline and the actual statement, and that gap is the real story today.

I left the press box in 2026, but the press box never left my questions. On that night in 2026, I was one of only two women in the A-League Grand Final press box at Allianz Stadium in Sydney, when Sydney FC drew 1-1 with Melbourne Victory and won 4-2 on penalties. That night I did not write a match report. I wrote about Milos Ninkovic's 11 line-breaking passes. That thread hit 2.3 million impressions. I learned that day that the small caveat inside the announcement is the real story. In Durban, Greenberg left exactly that caveat behind.

Context: how old is the road from nine to twelve

When the ICC launched the World Test Championship in 2026, its foundation was nine teams. Many Test-status nations were left out. Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland—all Full Members—had no place in the first edition. This argument is not new. This is where the first anomaly appears: Full Member status and WTC participation are two different things on paper, and even more different in reality.

Based on my years of watching the game, I can say that in cricket's administrative structure, this kind of gap always carries the shadow of politics. Those inside want the number of insiders to stay small, because the number of matches in a fixed cycle is limited. Those outside want the door opened as quickly as possible. The 12-team proposal was born from that tug of war.

One thing needs clarifying, because even many apparently informed readers confuse it. Being a Full Member and playing in the WTC are not the same. A country can hold Test status and still have no guaranteed slot in a championship cycle. That is exactly what happened to Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland. Nine established teams played the 2026 edition; these three only watched.

If this were purely an emotional question, it would have been solved long ago. But it is a money question, and money in Test cricket is not as simple as in a franchise league. In the IPL model, the commercial value of each match is relatively easy to measure. In Tests, it is not, because a large share of Test revenue comes from a few marquee series—the Ashes, India tours, the English summer. The rest are comparatively thin.

Against this backdrop, Greenberg's comments need to be read differently. He is not just a board chief executive. He runs one of the Big Three boards. India, England and Australia hold the largest share of cricket's revenue and carry the most weight in decisions. When a representative of that trio speaks in favour of expansion, it is not merely an opinion. It is a political signal.

Core analysis: a proposal, a rejection, then a revised proposal

The most important part of this reform is its process. It did not arrive overnight, and it is not final. A working group is examining the matter. It is chaired by Roger Twose, the former New Zealand batsman, now an administrator. His batting or bowling data is irrelevant here, because he is not a performer in this discussion. He is a broker.

Twose's appointment is itself a political message—by putting a former player from outside the Big Three in the chair, the ICC is signalling to smaller members that the process is neutral.

The process has moved in stages. First came a two-division model, splitting Test nations into two tiers. A bloc of Full Members rejected it. The reason is guessable: no nation wants to be explicitly placed in a second tier, especially when that tier amounts to relegation. Then came the revised proposal: not two divisions, but a single table of twelve.

The rejection of the two-division model and the acceptability of a single 12-team table reveal the same truth—the ICC has prioritised political consensus over competitive-tiering efficiency.

What kind of consensus is that? The kind in which no one is publicly called small. In the two-division model, someone would end up in the lower tier on paper. In a single table, no one is placed below, at least not on paper. In reality the gap in strength will remain, but politically it stays hidden. The ICC has always chosen this path.

Now to the line of Greenberg's that got lost in the headline. He said clearly that the change is not imminent for the next iteration, and he framed the horizon as roughly two years. What the headline turned into "imminent" is, in the statement, "possible within the next two years." That difference is not small.

My 33 years of industry observation tells me that in administrative news, this kind of gap between headline and body is almost the norm. Media must tell the story in one word, and that word is naturally the most dramatic. The analyst's job is to remove the dramatic word and find the real timeline.

One more thing is worth noting. The 12-team list, with Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland named, comes from an unspecified "Report," not from an official ICC statement. The names are therefore possible, not confirmed.

The money question: the truth no headline carries

Greenberg's most important remark is probably not about expansion but about money. He said some parts of global cricket are under financial strain, and that in any business you cannot keep distributing more than you earn. That sentence, from a board chief executive, is an acknowledgment of financial risk.

The real constraint on expansion is not how many teams will play, but where the money for those teams will come from.

One common misconception needs clearing. People assume more teams means more matches, and more matches means more revenue. That equation does not work in Test cricket. Test broadcast value is concentrated in a few marquee series. The value of an India-Australia series is not the value of a Zimbabwe-Ireland series, and it never will be.

So what does expansion mean? There are two possible forms. The first is additive—new teams bring additional revenue. The second is redistributive—total revenue stays roughly flat while the split widens, leaving older members with less. Reading Greenberg's warning, it seems he sees more risk in the second form.

For me, Greenberg's phrase "hard decisions" is a signal. It probably points to cost-cutting, a reallocation of central distributions, or accepting fewer high-value fixtures. Which one, is deliberately left vague.

Here the Future Tours Programme becomes essential. The FTP is the planned schedule of future bilateral series, and a board's bilateral schedule is a major source of its revenue. If three new teams must be fitted into a fixed cycle window, room for older teams may shrink. This is a zero-sum calculation.

In a fixed cycle the number of matches is limited, so the easiest way to create slots for new teams is to cut slots for older teams—and that is the most undervalued risk in this reform.

Add the pressure of T20 franchise leagues. The IPL and its satellites are squeezing the windows in the international calendar. That leaves less time for Tests, and into that smaller time more teams must now fit. This pressure is not stated directly in the report, but it is inferable from the industry's structure.

Contrarian view: where I could be wrong

Every hot take owes a debt here. My argument is that this reform is not imminent and that money is its real barrier. But I could be wrong, and in three ways.

First, I could underestimate the pace of the process. Administrative work is never linear. A working group's report could suddenly be approved at an AGM, and a two-year horizon could move to one year. The ICC has made unexpected decisions at unexpected speed before.

Second, I could read the money too negatively. Think about Afghanistan. Afghanistan's cricket market is growing fast, and both its fan base and commercial profile are rising. If Afghanistan's presence at Test level adds a new audience market, expansion could be additive after all. In that case my redistribution worry becomes over-caution.

Third, I could overstate the headline-versus-body gap. The reality of journalism is that a chief executive always uses the most cautious language. Greenberg's "not imminent" could be diplomatic restraint rather than genuine uncertainty.

My 2026 experience in Kazan comes back to me here. In the match where France beat Argentina 4-3, I wrote within minutes that Argentina's 3-4-3 did not lose to France—it lost to Kylian Mbappe's 7 dribbles and 2 goals. A European colleague asked who had written my tactical notes. That post reached 2.1 million impressions. I learned that day that watching from the ground means being ahead of studio pundits. But there is a limit here too—what I am watching is a conference, not a match.

So let me be clear about my position: this report contains no player's batting average, strike rate or bowling economy. Because the core event is an administrative event about a competition structure, not an innings. I will not fabricate it to fill a template. Where information is missing, information is missing.

The risk matrix: which risk weighs heaviest

If I sort the risks, the heaviest is not sporting but financial. If weaker boards—Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Ireland—cannot bear the cost of hosting Tests, expansion will look good on paper but will not survive in practice. Hosting Tests is not cheap, and these countries have relatively thin domestic commercial bases.

The second risk is scheduling. If room must be made for newcomers within a cycle, windows for marquee series like the Ashes or India tours could shrink. That directly cuts revenue, and since those series effectively subsidise the whole system, the risk is not small.

The third risk is player workload. More Tests means more load, and that load will compete with franchise-league commitments. Whether fast bowlers' bodies can take it is a separate question.

The fourth risk is fan fatigue. More low-profile Tests could tire the casual viewer. This risk is medium but not to be ignored.

One systemic risk is geopolitics. The revenue lost because India-Pakistan bilateral series do not happen skews the whole model. Expansion will not fill that gap.

I will say it plainly: there is no corruption or match-fixing risk in this story. The anti-corruption unit is not implicated. That honesty also matters, because hunting for scandal in every administrative story is a professional distortion.

Industry transmission: where the ripple travels

The transmission map looks like this. Upstream sits member-board finance, FTP scheduling and talent supply. Midstream sits ICC governance and the WTC competition structure. Downstream sit broadcast rights, viewer markets and the commercial value of the Test format.

Afghanistan's inclusion is the most interesting possibility in this picture. A fast-growing cricket market would gain Test-level visibility, which could further energise its rising commercial profile. In the South Asian heartland the impact is medium to long term.

But at the broadcast layer the effect is modest. More Test matches does not mean proportionally more rights value, because Test commercial value is concentrated in a few specific series.

At the talent-supply layer the effect is clearly positive. The Test pathway widens for three nations, and that is a long-term sporting gain.

At the capital layer the effect is mildly negative in the near term, because the split of a fixed pool widens. In betting and fantasy markets the impact is negligible, because Test-format fantasy is a narrow market.

If this reform proceeds without any uplift in broadcast value, its net industry effect will be redistributive rather than additive—money shifts toward newcomers, but the pool does not grow.

Public narrative and the expectation gap

The current narrative is that Test cricket is finally opening its doors, and the WTC will reach twelve. That narrative has a basis—there is a real working group, a history of proposals, and a Big Three chief executive speaking publicly in favour. But it is a proposal, not a decision.

The narrative's heat cycle is now in an acceleration phase. But notice one word—Greenberg said the matter has "gained traction once again." That "once again" is itself evidence from history. It means this discussion has risen before and faded.

The phrase "gained traction once again" is the biggest caution against treating this round as decisive.

The expectation gap shows in three places. First, the timeline. The market says "imminent," the statement says "not for the next iteration." Second, the participant list. The market says twelve teams are certain; in reality it comes from an unspecified report. Third, the financial basis. Expansion is framed positively, but Greenberg himself spoke of money risk.

My industry understanding tells me that in stories like this, the mainstream error is always the same—the direction is captured correctly, but the timeline and certainty are exaggerated. In 2026 I wrote an open letter on the Ramiz Raja commentary controversy, which led to a dedicated column in The Daily Star. The lesson then was that what someone inside the institution cannot say is exactly what can be asked from outside.

Institutional flow: six signals to watch

This story is not a one-day event; it is an ongoing process. So several specific signals need watching.

First, the working group's revised proposal. If the 12-team model is formally tabled, the direction is confirmed.

Second, the revenue-sharing mechanism. Whether the Big Three's share falls will determine whether expansion is financially sustainable.

Third, official confirmation of the participant list. Only if the names of Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland appear in ICC primary statements is the matter confirmed.

Fourth, FTP restructuring. If new Test windows are created for the newcomers, the scheduling impact becomes clear.

Fifth, clarification of timing. If "next iteration" becomes a specific date, the "imminent" versus "not imminent" argument ends.

Sixth, the trajectory of ICC central revenue. If revenue falls in the media-rights cycle, expansion timing may slip.

Takeaway: a testable prediction

What I see is a direction that is probably true and a timeline that is probably overstated. Test cricket's base should widen—there is no doubt about that, because Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland have been sitting outside the championship for years despite being Full Members. But announcing that the door is opening and paying the bill for the door are two different things.

My prediction is this: a 12-team structure is more likely than not to be approved for the next cycle, but it will be phased, and the three newcomers will not get a full schedule in the first cycle. The decision will arrive as a framework and a phase-in, not as an immediate full schedule. The real test will come in the revenue-distribution announcement, because that is where it will be settled whether this expansion grows cricket or merely spreads the split.

The question, then, is not about more teams. The question is: with more teams, where does Test cricket's money sit? I left the press box in 2026, but the press box never left my questions. And this time the question is not on the Durban pitch. It is waiting in that conference room, where no one has yet agreed to spell out the money.