Originally Posted by
Neil_Harris:
“Was that a Sky initiative
(You can probably guess I'm trying to blame them anyway I can)”
We had this debate last year - Alex came up with some great arguments about the fact that it wasn't necessarily Sky's prerogative that the ODIs came in the middle of the summer in the C4/Sky years (as soon as Sky took over the test coverage in 2006, the main test series shifted earlier on in the summer).
I think the plan in the then-new summer schedule was that England needed to play more ODI cricket, following the disastrous World Cup campaigns of 1996 and 1999, hence the introduction of the tri-series (aping the Australian tournament structure that they'd used for many years). The number of tests in a summer moved from six to seven - previously (I think I'm right in saying) they'd either be split with two touring teams playing three tests each (e.g. in 1994 and 1996) or one test team playing six (e.g. the 1997 Ashes). (1998 and 1999 were kind-of transition years, as we played five tests v SA in 98 and then a one-off test against SL at the end of the summer, and that was the first year that a mini-tri-series was staged; 1999 was heavily influenced by the World Cup, which took up the early summer, then NZ stayed to play just four tests afterwards.)
The shift to seven tests meant that we always had two visiting teams per summer - originally the 'usual' split was 2 tests for the smaller touring nation, 5 for the larger one, but this gradually shifted across to a 3/4 split which is now the norm. Presumably they wanted large crowds in the height of summer for the NatWest Series, with the introduction of day-night matches and the like.
Interestingly, the first summer in which this structure was used (2000), the ODIs came mid-way through the England-West Indies test series. After that, they were always between the two test series.
As someone who distantly remembers cricket in the 90s (I was born in 1991), but really remembers from the early-00s onwards, May tests don't seem odd to me, as it's become de-rigeur. They always seemed the poor relation to the second series, even though they've thrown up some fab matches over the years - the drama of Old Trafford in 2001, the wonderful third test against SL in 2002 and, more recently, the test series against SL two years ago. But it's swung back into fashion to say that the May tests aren't working, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were axed come the new TV contract in 2020.