OPINION: The health of Test cricket

Test cricket in England looks quite appealing and attractive; it always has and probably it will continue to do so. This month has been special for Test cricket in England due to the two Test matches scheduled over there. One, where South Africa emerged victorious by shedding its image of the chokers to win the World Test Championship final by defeating Australia clinically and second where England defeated India on the last session of the last day of first Test match of the newly named Tendulkar-Anderson Trophy.

 

The crowds filled the stands in both the matches, the atmosphere in the stadium was great, the commentary on air was superb – especially in the WTC final. Looking at all these factors, one would assume that the health of Test cricket is not only good but great. However, one when one looks at the Test matches played away from England, Australia and to an extent India, these matches are not a great sight to watch. Empty stands and pin drop silence in stadiums sends a poor signal to the TV audience. The worldwide audiences of cricket watching the matches on-screen have traditionally fed off the vibes from the crowds in the stadium.

 

Today, Test cricket has shrunk because people are not going to the stadiums, except in England and Australia. The visual treat of watching and enjoying a Test match is fading away constantly, consistently and continually over a last decade and half. Yes, there are certain matches and few marquee series which is followed avidly among the cricket fans. The Ashes, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and the India-England series are three biggest Test series which garner a lot of attention. That’s probably why all three series are now five-match Test series – Ashes have largely remained a 5 match series historically.

 

Today, apart from the Big-3 i.e. India, England and Australia, the other nations are not able to afford to host a long Test series. In the last World Test Championship cycle, South Africa chose to send its second-rung side to New Zealand for a Test series because its first line of players were otherwise engaged in the SA-T20 tournament. The South African players and the board clearly prioritised T20 cricket over Test cricket and despite losing to New Zealand, they made it to the World Test Championship final and won it. Cricket boards in South Africa, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, West Indies and Pakistan are more inclined to play short Test series, comprising 2-3 Tests.

 

The reason is that the broadcasters are not interested in these fixtures. This is because over the years they have seen the futility of broadcasting these matches which don’t make the desired viewing numbers. Cricket broadcasting is a highly profit aiming business. That’s why certain tournaments like the IPL, World Cups, Champions Trophy, BGT, Ashes get sold like hot cakes to the broadcasters giving them exclusive rights to show these matches on their platforms. While the rest of the matches and series keep looking for broadcasters. This became apparent when the Indian team went to West Indies for a Test series last year and no broadcaster had offered to purchase the rights for the series. This is when Doordarshan, which is the public broadcaster in India, got an offer from the West Indies cricket board to cover it live. So, basically Doordarshan got a chance when no other platform wanted it in the first place. Nobody wants to be a sloppy second or to be considered by others as one. But Doordarshan agreed to do the live telecast of the series.

 

The rider here was that only those people who had a DTH connection could watch the Test series live. This shows that there is a class divide in cricket and this division is increasing by leaps and bounds. This is taking us back to an era before the 1960s when international cricket was bipolar in nature, one pole being England, other being Australia. The rise of South Africa and West Indies in Test cricket in the 1960s seriously challenged this bipolarity. This was great for cricket’s overall health. The rise of India and Pakistan in the next two decades completely changed the complexion of Test cricket and cricket at large. Sri Lanka’s sensational win in the 1996 World Cup and Zimbabwe’s rise as a cricketing nation meant that nine good teams were playing by the end of the 1990s.

 

That period in history is arguably one of the best ever in terms of cricket’s democratisation. The players who played across these teams made that particular generation of cricketers the best to have ever played the game. Their battles on the field were a battle of equals. On a given day, even Zimbabwe would defeat South Africa and Sri Lanka would defeat the mighty Australia. This is what cricket needs and this is what would make it attractive again. The rise of the IPL might have monetarily helped a lot of cricketers but cricket overall has suffered a lot due to it.

The T20 dopamine hit has destroyed the Test cricket viewership and the culture of viewing a cricket match in the longer format. Today, even the future of One-Day cricket is at stake. Neither the traditionalists who fight for Test cricket fight for it nor the T20 fans have any inclination towards this format. ODIs were the darling of cricket for nearly three decades which brought huge sums of money to the game and didn’t threaten Test cricket.

 

Today, cricket pundits are arguing whether the World Test Championship final should be kept in England like the last three times or is it a good time to now shift the venue of the final to the other countries. Much like what happened to the ODI World Cup which in the first three editions in 1975, 1979 and 1983 were played in England and from there on it has moved globally. The problem with moving the Test championship finals from England is again the same. Would people fill the stands in Sri Lanka or West Indies if a WTC final is scheduled there which doesn’t consist of the host country?

 

The administrators of cricket need to re-assess the situation. This should have been assessed a decade back but the overall health of cricket was allowed to rot because one segment of cricket has been making obscene sums of money. In economic terms, it’s almost like a situation where top 1 per cent has 90 per cent of resources and the rest 99 per cent are left to rot under abysmal conditions, but the overall numbers of economy would project great numbers making the administrators happy and giving them an impetus to overlook the actual class divide.

 

Cricket needs fundamental resets and paradigm shifts for its overall health to get better. One possible thing that should be done is to start having multilateral Test tournaments. Cricket history shows two such precedents, one was the first ever triangular cricket tournament played between Australia, England and South Africa in 1913 in England and second was the Asian Test Championship in 1999. This format would attract the audience as well as the advertisers. In the 1990s, this experiment of multilateral ODI tournaments helped the weaker sides to grow by playing with the relatively stronger sides. Also, the smaller cricket boards would not have to search for broadcasters because the rights would be sold for the entire series, which would cover those matches as well as those are played by relatively weaker teams.

 

The same thing can be done with ODI cricket as well. The bilateral series format in the international cricket needs to be replaced by multilateral tournaments to generate both money and interest, but most importantly, the health of the game. However, few marquee bilateral tournaments can continue, like the ones played between the Big-3. To conclude, if radical changes are not implemented in cricket, the game will fade away (especially the Test and the ODI format) from a large part of the cricketing world. 

 

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.

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