Iain O'Brien's Cricket Blog

More from Sreelata and once again these views may not necessarily be those expressed by Iain.

 

Why is No One Looking at Test Cricket for Answers?

It is hard to imagine that any present crisis within the game of cricket can be monumentally bigger than the one that threatens to disfigure Test cricket. This numbers game has everyone jittery (and plausibly twittering as well) and one can bring most other critical issues about the game to the one subject – the sustenance of Test cricket. As a cricket aficionado, it bothers me that Test cricket may need to become a circus clown if only to survive and that Twenty20 is now the puppeteer that is running the show.

 

Bottom Line – The Only One that counts?

The popular ABBA song ‘Money, Money, Money’ begins like this,

             “I work all night, I work all day,

              To pay the bills I have to pay.

              Ain’t it sad?

              And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me.

              That’s too bad.”

 

If Test cricket was about charitable cause, a fund raiser such as the one-off Twenty20 match between the Rajasthan Royals and the Middlesex Panthers at Lord’s for the British Asia Cup last month would have done the trick. It was rather surprising personally, despite the immense popularity of Twenty20, that crowds turned up as they did and the amount of interest generated by that single match alone, stealing the thunder right before the Ashes!

But coming back to the point, if facts were to be faced, sustaining Test cricket by the gate revenue now appears a utopian dream. That is also perhaps the single most telling reason why the ICC has even concerned itself with tinkering with the most traditional form of the game. Were it not for the money, perhaps more voices would have a valid case for casting aspersions of blasphemy upon those that would even consider Test cricket as susceptible to the vagaries of time. Sadly in the face of money, the voice of the Test fan is drowned in the hoarse cheers of not Twenty20 fans necessarily, but of those that are actually minting money from the game (and they are not even the cricketers).

              

Test cricket in a year could be…

The proposals in front of the ICC are enough to send a shiver down the purist’s back. The ICC President, David Morgan, has suggested reducing the Test format from a five day fixture to a four day affair. His argument, and a fair one, is that this change would require the least amount of adaptation on the part of the cricketers as far as their game is concerned.

ICC’s General Manager, Dave Richardson, had another take – that of developing a two tier format wherein the non performing teams would be relegated to the lower division, much like how football clubs are run around the world. It is not hard to see why this format would work. It would mean more evenly matched teams would compete with each other, raising the level of the game, and reducing viewer fatigue watching five mindless days of watching the lion devour the lamb.

Close on the heels in terms of idea is the proposal to have a World Test Championship that would not only determine the true champion but also, sift the contenders from the pretenders, and raise the interest levels of the cricket loving crowds as the contest reaches a climax. But if indications being sounded are to be believed, some boards are more reluctant than others to subjecting themselves to this global cricket contest simply because they feel they have a greater pull in terms of the gate revenue and therefore, should be entitled to a bigger piece of the pie. The pie, as it stands, is proposed to be equally divided amongst all Test playing nations.

This is perhaps a take from the ordinary but the MCC, the Marylebone Cricket Club, is awaiting the ICC’s approval to, hold your breath, hold a Test match under lights with cricketers in coloured clothing!

For sheer novelty value, even the IPL fades before it. But for viability, this Kerry Packer-like agenda needs a lot of reworking. It is not as simple as getting a sponsor to brand the company’s name on the back of a colour stained shirt or of moving in floodlights as they have already at Lord’s.                 

The most worrisome aspect, I think, is, if the general perception is that the cricket loving public is an impatient lot that would kill for Twenty20 but would rather be dead when faced with the prospect of sitting through a Test match, it has to be a myopic view because overcooking a meal never tasted good or right. What makes one think that the same crowd would sit through a Test match just because the cricketers were now wearing something other than their traditional flannels? While the aim is obvious – to target the after office hours, how many people would enjoy the game where the day and night factor played tricks on batsmen, where dew would have the say in whose factor the match would tilt and how light conditions would affect visibility to sustain play through the entire day, oops, or night and how many experiments with the coloured ball would determine the most appropriate one? Think back to the Twilight Zone.

 

Can't IPL money be equated with Test cricket pay outs?

Gary Kirsten is sounding like a man waging a lone battle telling the Indian cricketers to think twice between wearing the Indian cap with pride and falling for the lure of Twenty20. Some would say pride in playing is a redundant value, others would call it plain silly to be letting easy money go when the proverb urges to make hay while the sun shines. Would it be valid to say that Andrew Flintoff was making hay by retiring prematurely when he is dozing off at night to the sound of machine alternating and compressing his knee in order to play through a Test?

To me, it is inconceivable to think that every aspiring cricketer or current Test cricketer is in the game to become another Sachin Tendulkar in terms of his bank balance. Yet it would be disconnecting from reality to think that cricketers are only idols and that they do not have a family they are also responsible for and for whom they owe it to provide a life of reasonable comfort.

Can Lalit Modi be expected to understand the pedestal value of Test cricket? Not likely. But can a cricketer be lured back to the game that he would love to play but cannot sustain either because of the grueling demands or the rather disproportionate wage he is currently being paid? Most certainly. Can’t cricketer play for pride and also, make a respectable earning out of it?Is that not a win-win situation for all concerned?

 

Why not check Test cricket itself?

Can the ICC guarantee that a day and night Test would address all the problems that ail Test cricket in respect of its ability to raise gargantuan revenues? And what happens to a two tier division or a world contest if problems between the boards and cricketers ensue in the stalemate that is West Indian cricket with both, WIPA and WICB, holding their ground and not in favour of a compromise? I was not quite sure watching the Test series between Bangladesh and West Indies whether to applaud Bangladesh for playing beyond expectations or moan for the sad funereal feeling about the game in the West Indies.  

The question not many people seem to be asking is: why not raise accountability for Test cricket? It may sound revolutionary but it really is not. When Australia lost the second Test of the current Ashes to England at Lord’s, Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain, stated what was the bare truth – Australia did not do the basics right. Perhaps the ICC and the respective cricket boards that constitute the Test playing nations should wonder if they are indeed doing the basics right.

In order to get the radar right, key factors must come into consideration. Pitch conditions that are sporting even if slightly biased in terms of the home advantage (who wants monotony? But no one wants the Kanpur pitch laid out for South Africa or the sham that was the Viv Richards Stadium in Antigua), timing of series that is more in alignment with the prevailing weather than the monetary and financial implications of sealing the deal (weather is unpredictable anyway, why add by having a washed out series in the monsoons?), ensuring better over rates, contests between teams that would draw the crowds, better decision making with or without the Umpire Decision Review System. The list seems endless. And not one is an issue that is being seriously debated, not from the angle of how it will actually impact Test cricket.

The Ashes are showing that people who love Twenty20 will come to the Test cricket if it promises a feisty contest. People who lapped up Pakistan’s performances in the ICC World Twenty20 were less reluctant to follow their escapades in Sri Lanka because of the fallible aura that accompanies Pakistan cricket in recent times when facing up to larger tasks. And despite the obvious shortcomings, the series had its moments and as Andrew Strauss spoke about Australia’s aura in the Ashes of 2006-’07, Sri Lanka always had the air about them that they could come back into the team no matter what Pakistan threw at them.       

This is not to imply that change is bad or that closeted thinking would help Test cricket. But change for change’s sake is now a redundant idea. Test cricket is in a need for a lift of spirits. But is that change being proposed in the spirit of the game?

 One can only leave this discussion with the chorus of the same ABBA song:

 

        “Money, money, money,

          Must be funny,

          In a rich man’s world…”

 

  Go figure.