Gluttony of white-ball cricket can elevate the Test game rather than kill it
England have had no Test cricket since the end of July, and those of us who take the game seriously are waiting keenly for Jan 25, when they meet India in Hyderabad for the first of a series of five. There are some tempting hors d’oeuvres before then: a short series between Australia and Pakistan, and then Australia and West Indies, and South Africa playing India at home, which will be avidly watched by those wondering how England might perform, before South Africa go to New Zealand. Indeed, for the real aficionado there is already some serious cricket under way, with New Zealand in Bangladesh; the home side won the first Test after conceding a small first-innings lead and are, at time of writing, struggling in the second. How far this is a sign of Bangladesh’s continuing development as a Test-playing nation, or of New Zealand’s decline, is a matter for debate.
When I last watched a home New Zealand Test on television the ground was around five-sixths empty and the home side were going through the motions. This old Test playing nation – it celebrates its Test cricketing centenary in 2027 – appears to have fallen serious victim to a focus on one-day cricket, and to have let the red-ball game wither on the vine, either by design or by accident. It makes sense that the bigger the country, the more likely there will be a diversity of cricketing interest that will sustain both the red and the white-ball forms of the game. India, with a population of over 1.4 billion, is particularly blessed in this respect – and it (and the superb entrepreneurialism of some Indian businessmen, which the England and Wales Cricket Board can only dream of) is not least why the Indian Premier League is now reported to have a value of nearly £12 billion.
But New Zealand – with a population of just over five million – will, despite the high popularity of sport in the country, struggle to find people to watch serious cricket, if it exhausts their interest and their wallets with the now usual diet of pointless, forgettable, meretricious white-ball matches. Australia, with a culture of even greater fanaticism for sport and a population five times the size of its neighbour, is less challenged: and the fierce competitiveness of grade cricket has helped maintain high-quality Sheffield Shield sides and a very high-quality Test team that people want to watch. Doubtless the New Zealand team would strongly deny any accusation that they lack motivation when it comes to Test cricket: but that is not how it has lately seemed.
Something similar applies to the West Indies, whose performance in red-ball cricket in recent years has been mixed to say the least, and certainly nothing compared to their glory days from the 1960s to the 1990s. The usual explanation for this decline is the mounting cultural impact of the United States on West Indies’ society, and especially of the inclination of young West Indian men to play basketball. Ironically, the new Twenty20 competition in America, if it attracts West Indian players, may help reignite interest in cricket in some form in the West Indies. It will, however, do nothing to improve the quality of or interest in Test cricket there.
For the moment, there are no such problems in exciting interest in England. Many MCC members have been complaining in recent days about the scaled-down allocation of members’ friends tickets for the two Tests at Lord’s next season against West Indies and Sri Lanka. It will be instructive to see whether other English grounds are packed: I suspect they will be, provided England continue to do well (there can be no doubt that Bazball has stimulated a new level of interest in the England Test team). But it will also be a further example of the appetite of the English public for serious, memorable cricket that exhibits the game in its finest incarnation, with skills other than those of the slogfest and of tight bowling. The surfeit of increasingly boring white-ball cricket has not only dulled the interest in itself, but has reminded cricket lovers that it was the long-form game that attracted most of them to take an interest in professional cricket in the first place.
Yet Oscar Wilde’s observation that each man kills the thing he loves is becoming more and more applicable to the highest form of the game. Tickets are increasingly expensive and, at a time when the ECB is blathering on about diversity, inclusivity and access – and it has just appointed an independent regulator not least to assure such things – it scarcely helps ensure a wide range of people can attend these matches, but rather tends to restrict the clientele to the better-off. This pricing policy may not be sustainable in the long-term: there is increasing competition for the public’s disposable income, and with every year that live Test cricket is confined to subscription television the potential client base is corroded, with might-have-been cricket spectators finding other means of entertainment.
Also, the over rate in Test matches has become dismal. The view of some cricket commentators that the action in the last couple of seasons rendered an appalling over-rate irrelevant is not shared by many paying spectators: 90 overs a day is what they pay for – and many feel that isn’t enough, given how in living memory 100 a day was quite routine – and that is what they should get. Otherwise, it is another assault on the client base. The review process has to be speeded up and the technology should not be beyond doing so, and the endless breaks in play and the amount of loitering when the game should be played have become unacceptable. Either fine sides heavily for such play (and use the money for refunds to credit cards) or make them stay an hour late if necessary to make up the time.
It is tremendous paradox. In England at least Test cricket is revered far more highly than the white-ball game, and every further glut of Mickey-Mouse cricket makes the craving for Test matches even greater. However, at every turn Test cricket is being undermined – and I haven’t even mentioned the threat to it from the marginalisation of the county game, on which it relies for players. The cynicism of the ECB in pursuing the cash cow of white-ball cricket so ruthlessly cannot but have dire consequences for the Test game: the only question is when.
