ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – For­mer West In­dies fast bowler Ken­neth Ben­jamin wants to see the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a two-tier Test sys­tem as he be­lieves it would help to im­prove the qual­i­ty of crick­et on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

The 57-year-old Ben­jamin, who played 26 Tests and 26 ODIs for the West In­dies be­tween 1992 and 1998, said the move was good for the sport and nec­es­sary for its de­vel­op­ment.

His com­ments have come fol­low­ing re­ports that dis­cus­sions are set to take place be­tween the ICC chair­man and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Aus­tralia, In­dia and Eng­land this month on whether to split its 12 Full Mem­bers in­to two tiers based on rank­ings.

While the sug­ges­tion has been knocked by sev­er­al West In­di­ans, in­clud­ing for­mer cap­tain Sir Clive Lloyd and Crick­et West In­dies pres­i­dent Dr Kishore Shal­low, Ben­jamin said he ful­ly sup­port­ed the pro­pos­al.

He said a rel­e­ga­tion and pro­mo­tion sys­tem could be utilised.

“I think it is bet­ter for a lot of the teams if they have a two-tier [sys­tem].

“And, hon­est­ly, I know West In­dies may feel it a bit if they’re pushed down in that, but I be­lieve it is some­thing that is over­due,” Ben­jamin stat­ed.

“That’s how we’re go­ing to know if they’re get­ting bet­ter. It al­so gives the team in the bot­tom tier some­thing to re­al­ly work at.

“It’s not just that they’re play­ing at that lev­el, it’s that they can get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go up and play against the best teams and the best play­ers in the world.”

Fur­ther­more, Ben­jamin pre­dict­ed that the time would come when the West In­dies would be dis­band­ed and in­di­vid­ual ter­ri­to­ries made to rep­re­sent them­selves.

“It may not be in our life­time, but it’s go­ing to hap­pen when An­tigua has to play sep­a­rate­ly, and Bar­ba­dos and so on, just like how we see foot­ball is,” Ben­jamin added.

CMC