A 12-Team WTC: The Door Is Opening, But Who Foots the Bill?

I watched the Durban press conference one replay behind the world. In a Rajshahi editing room, as Todd Greenberg's face came up on the laptop screen promising that Test cricket's door would swing wider, half the men at the tea stall next door were still arguing about which channel was carrying the match. Greenberg's words had not reached them yet. I paused the screen, picked up my cup, and asked myself: whose story is this really — the three nations who have been waiting outside the Test party for a decade, or the ones who have already divided the biggest contracts among themselves?

Greenberg's answer is wrapped in hesitation. Cricket Australia's chief executive said a 12-team World Test Championship is now a real possibility, with Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland potentially joining. But in the very next breath he added that it is "not imminent for the next iteration." The headline says imminent; the speaker's own mouth says not imminent. That gap is the real story here.

I think back to 2026. The WTC launched with nine teams. Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland were Full Members yet stood outside that race, left with only limited series against those nine. The distance between Full Member status and WTC participation was a structural anomaly. Years later, that anomaly is being discussed again.

The idea is not new. An earlier proposal floated a two-division model that would effectively have split teams into two tiers. The member boards rejected it. The reason is predictable — nobody wants "second tier" written beside their name. A lower division means fewer marquee matches, less revenue, less bargaining power. For boards already standing at the edge, that proposal was another shove.

So now the idea is one table, twelve teams, with no tier label beside anyone's name. The ICC's machinery is slow but it is moving. First a working group, chaired by former New Zealand batsman Roger Twose. A proposal, then member rejection, then a revised proposal — that is how it has travelled. The lesson is that this is not a one-day announcement; it is the product of negotiation.

My WhatsApp group of 340 people includes northern club coaches, groundstaff and bus drivers. In 2026 I chose to stay in Rajshahi when my Dhaka daily shut its print desk and pushed eight reporters onto a digital team. Since then I have written match reports as conversations rather than verdicts. Greenberg's announcement is exactly that kind of conversation — where the process matters more than the decision.

Now to the hard arithmetic. The question of expanding to twelve teams is not a cricket question; it is a money question. Greenberg himself admits this indirectly. In his words, "any business, you can't continue to distribute more than you earn every year." That single line hides the real story. That "some parts" of world cricket are spending beyond their income is being said by the CEO of a major board — and that is what makes it significant.

Consider it: the head of a Big Three board saying that parts of the system are running at a loss. He names no one, but it is not hard to see where the finger points. The boards with commercially thin bilateral schedules, the boards that struggle to recover the cost of hosting a Test — those are the "some parts." Hosting a Test is not cheap. Five days of cricket, a large ground, broadcast setup, security — staging a series is a heavy burden for a weaker board.

This is my second doubt. I carry the numbers to the tea stalls and ask who trusts which figure. When Greenberg speaks of "hard decisions," what does that actually mean? Accepting lower-revenue fixtures, or redistributing central income, or cutting the number of marquee matches? He makes none of it clear. That vagueness is the biggest risk of all.

I am not saying expansion is bad. Think of Afghanistan — a fast-growing cricket market with a sizeable fan base suddenly gaining Test-tier visibility. Bangladeshis know well how large that stage is. For Zimbabwe and Ireland too, this door means fresh life. On sporting inclusion, this is a real win.

But a win for inclusion is not automatically a win for commerce. If the WTC grows to twelve while nobody speaks of broadcast revenue rising, the effect is not additive but redistributive — more hands sharing the same pool. Test broadcast value is concentrated in a few marquee series: the Ashes, India's tours. Newcomers' matches do not move that market much. So the arithmetic of expansion risks dividing rather than adding.

There is another angle that rarely makes the headline. A cycle has a finite number of Test windows. Add three new teams and the Big Three's marquee series may get less room. Greenberg himself raised the Future Tours Programme. That schedule is a board's main revenue source. So a tension between expansion and protecting the big series is inevitable — and it will decide who plays how many Tests.

Watching a full Test cycle's schedule, I have learned that the gaps in the calendar are the real politics. Who plays whom, how often, which series gets televised and which does not — these are silent decisions. In my eyes the only real yardstick for this expansion is a single one: will the newcomers get to play at the big teams' grounds, or will they spin in circles at home?

I keep the accounts of those left outside the frame. How often does news of a decision arrive while the teams whose fate is being decided have no one in the room? Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Ireland — their names are rising in this twelve-team draft, yet we do not see their representatives' faces at the press conference. Greenberg says Twose's committee is thinking. The decision is not in their hands.

That absence is the biggest story for me. For a decade a structure has stood around nine teams, and the decision to let the outsiders in is being made largely by those same nine. This is not a complaint; it is a fact. Full membership means equality on paper, not equality in decisions. And that inequality will determine how soon the twelfth seat arrives.

My data sheet says one thing: the real test of any structural reform is not its announcement but its implementation. The two-division proposal looked fine on paper and stalled in practice. If the twelve-team plan is twelve on paper and stops at seven or eight on the field, what is gained? More members but not more matches — that must not be allowed.

Now to the contrarian corner the headline skips. The headline says imminent. Greenberg's own words say "not imminent for the next iteration," and he frames the horizon as the next two years. That is a headline-versus-body gap. Readers see imminent and think it happens the day after tomorrow; the speaker says it is still a proposal.

There is something deeper too — the phrase "gained traction once again." It means the talk has gathered speed before and then faded. So this round is not final either. Nothing is final until the ICC's own written announcement arrives. The old hands in my WhatsApp group know this well — rumour arrives first, the decision comes late. That patience is a beat reporter's real tool.

Another comfortable assumption never reaches the news. Why did the two-division model stall? Probably because smaller Full Members refused to be effectively demoted. So the single twelve-team table is the path of least political resistance — nobody is publicly pushed down. This is not a competitive-structure decision; it is a political compromise. And the price of that compromise will be paid in the future schedule.

Let me place one more question at the twelfth seat. If this expansion really comes, where does the money come from? Will the Big Three's share shrink, or will gaps be carved from the schedule, or will central revenue rise? All three are possible, but which one will decide whether expansion becomes real. Greenberg's "hard decisions" are hidden exactly here.

I watch matches one replay behind, so I have to wait. Watching politics demands the same patience. What is certain right now is that the direction is sound but the timeline is unproven. For the three nations waiting at the door, the biggest question is not "when" but "on what terms." Because opening a door and actually letting someone in are two very different things.

So this is how I read the next steps. First, the ICC working group's revised proposal — when it reaches the table is the first signal. Then the revenue-sharing formula — whether the Big Three's share changes. Then the final participant list — whether those three names become official. Until these three steps are crossed, the word "imminent" will live only in the headline.

I will go back to the tea stall with the numbers. Because even after an announcement, the real test of Test cricket happens on the field, at dawn with the groundstaff, in the empty stands. Whether the door opened cannot be read from a twelve-team list — it is read from who actually got in, and who was left standing outside.