Talking points from the MAK Pataudi Memorial Lecture

#2 How to sustain Test cricket?

The first ever day-night test was quite a spectacle and now it has become a raging social event at the Adelaide Oval every year.

"Is there a game anywhere quite like Test cricket in which so many people are passionate despite rarely attending a game in person? We need to get them back through the turnstiles. It's better for the players, the sponsors, and television...Let's throw equal marketing clout behind the Test game before we succumb to the lazy assumption that T20 rules."

Speaking of methods required to achieve preservation of Tests, Pietersen reiterated the ideas that have been proclaimed over the last few years but called for the better execution of them by the cricket boards. In what was the highlight of his lecture, he urged cricket administrators to promote Test cricket because that is the only way people will be drawn to that format of the game, with persistent marketing.

He called for more day-night games, which was perhaps a brave remark to make considering that he brought up pink-ball cricket in an audience that majorly comprised people who have always been reluctant to that idea. Nevertheless, cricket under floodlights has had a very exciting start to it as there have been close finishes, a whole new brand of an audience and the whole new bunch of strategies that are now applied, the most notorious of them being tactical declarations to get the advantage of bowling under the lights.

Pietersen was also keen on incentivizing the game via contextualization and affordability, as he remarked, "Let's make every game count. Push the profile of the World Test Championship. Develop marketing opportunities. Offer cheaper seats in the ground to provide a better spectacle for TV viewers."