Test Cricket: Officially Not Dead, Yet

In the last couple of months, I’ve come across an understandable, but still rather annoying trend among many cricket journalists, commentators and bloggers, informing the rest of us at any given opportunity that Test cricket is “alive and well”.

Now, I can comprehend where those sentiments come from – omnipresent pyjama cricket paired up with smaller crowds at Test matches and overall shorter series would get anybody going at some stage. What I can’t quite make out though is the point behind beating “Test cricket is alive and well,” into me with a stick after I’ve just sat on my bum for five days straight to watch what?

Yes, Test cricket.

What topped it off for me was the announcement of the Test Championship not being held in 2013, and instead postponed further until 2017, or rather the reaction to it. While I do understand some of the outrage, especially by a few of the older players who certainly won’t be around in six years time anymore, the level it got to was nothing short of hilarious. As we all know, the ICC have been struggling with scheduling the Twenty20 World Cup and Champions Trophy in the past couple of years already not only due to security concerns, but also due to short-sighted and inept organizing committees.

Gatorade Segways: Harbingers of doom for Test cricket?

But in a year where we already have to deal with the Champions Trophy on top of two(!) Ashes series, as the ICC are finally fixing the clash of the Ashes series in Australia and the World Cup, I do have to ask myself and every sane person what the problem was with postponing the Test Championship. The Champions Trophy will be hosted by England and Wales, the first Ashes series kicks off in Durham in July, the second in November in Australia. I know the Test Championship was supposed to replace the Champions Trophy, but still: where exactly do we fit the Test Championship in? And what would the format look like? And this is just concerning England’s schedule…

Personally, I don’t really care for a Test Championship, and I certainly won’t be lying awake at night, howling to the moon over it. What I would appreciate though is the ICC owning up to them and not really caring too much for it either, as it’s just not marketable and therefore, not going to be profitable enough for them. We may not like that kind of reasoning (even though it’d be at least the truth for a change), but cricket’s expensive. Most national boards as well as counties and states struggle with the upkeep and management of their respective grounds and teams all the way through the age groups, and the longer format of the game simply can’t fill the stadiums – and therefore the pockets – which is how we end up with series consisting of 27 ODIs, 34 T20s, and only two or three token Test matches.

I’m not suggesting we should just roll over and let the spectacularly incompetent ICC destroy everything that’s good and holy about this crazy game we love, but I also believe that constructive and realistic ideas are our best bet if we’re ever going to change anything for the better. Saying that more Tests need to be played without at least recognizing that so many ODIs and T20s are not only being played to fill the ICC Blazers’ bank accounts, but also in order to be able to continue to play as much Test cricket as possible, isn’t going to get us anywhere. Same goes for the rage which the postponement of the Test Championship was greeted with. And, for the “This is why we love Test cricket!” hysteria these days when a Test match does not end in a 600 & 147-1 and 790-6dec draw.

Nathan Lyon: Lamenting Test cricket, which is evidently in the last flicker of a dying flame.

At the end of the day, it’s those money-hungry yuppies in their tight suits, worshipping at the altar of the Holy Kieron of Pollard, the patron saint of cricket’s bastard lovechild with a greedy prostitute, their dead eyes forming the IPL logo, that want us to believe that something that’s been existing for well over a century is going to die a hopefully rather quick death in the next couple of years to make way for something as soulless and lifeless as 20-over cricket.

Said tight suits all make the same mistake, and that is measuring Test cricket, the atmosphere on the pitch as well as in the stands, with T20 standards, instead of viewing them both separately, as two different sports even. Proving the point of T20 being the future of the game by pointing towards the viewing figures and the doorway to hell, the Indian Premier League, is only telling half the story, and I’m rather disturbed to see respectable journalists and commentators going down that road as well.

The reasons why people aren’t storming Test match grounds are diverse and would certainly go well beyond the scope of this blog, but narrowing that catalogue of reasons down to “T20 is the way forward as it fills the stadiums, Test cricket is dying,” is blinkered and rather sad. Higher attendances at T20 games are in many cases a matter of practicality not preference. (As for those who want to watch T20 for T20?s sake, because they want that kind of ‘Mallorca atmosphere’ at a cricket ground, because they need a substitute for football, I don’t think we can make them cross over to the Dark Side by going on a Test Cricket Crusade. Nor should we aspire to.)

We all have jobs or school or University, therefore attending a day’s play of a Test match requires either a day off or skipping a class. And let’s not even talk about all five days of play…Attending a T20 game, on the other hand is convenient, because it’s usually played in the afternoon or evening; you buy your ticket and you know you’ll go home with a result – unless it’s been washed out, of course. While T20 may not be the real deal, at least you feel like you’re getting value for money, i.e. the start and finish of a cricket match, instead of maybe attending Day 2 of a Test and missing out on what’s happened before and after.

On top of that, tickets for Test matches are expensive. So even if you were able to attend all five days, you’d end up with having to pay at least £200 for a remotely acceptable seat, plus drinks and food and the obligatory souvenir from the fan shop at your venue of choice, plus potential accomodation. And that is just for one person. Who can afford that kind of extravagance on a regular basis? Booking tickets should never make you yell “I’m not trying to buy a yacht here, buddy!” at your computer or the ticket seller, but I’m afraid that happens more often than not when it comes to Tests.

Wayne Parnell: “Well, you see, the cage is a metaphor for the IPL, and my nudity is a metaphor for erm…yeah, I don’t know where I was going with this.”

I can’t be cross with anybody who thinks that £50 for a ticket to the Pyjama Festivities™ are a better investment. You won’t have to deal with bad light and umpires starting to faff around with the lightmeters from lunch onwards; the over rates are not an absolute insult to spectators – which both the players and the ICC could do something about, but there seem to be more pressing matters these days, e.g. Test Championship Postponement Hysteria – and as I mentioned above, you go home with a result.

“Preferring” the 20-over format for these reasons doesn’t make you a traitor who contributes to killing Test cricket, it just makes you a human being that has a life outside of cricket.

If you are a total cricket newbie and know next to nothing about it, it’s difficult to grasp that Test cricket is where it’s really at. When you look at a T20 game first, with the music and the girls and the noise and the Mexican waves, and are then confronted with Test cricket – I can’t blame anybody for thinking that Test cricket is just a bunch of braindead librarians assembling around a couple of white-clad guys, alternatively resembling giraffes or cut-up tree trunks.

But when you’ve been watching Test cricket religiously for your whole life, why the desperate campaigning? Why do I feel as if a hyper salesman is still trying to sell me the car I’ve already bought and paid in cash for? We’ve all bought into Test cricket already, there’s really no need to keep advertising it to us.

None of us who are staying up five nights in a row to watch the apparently all but dead Test cricket, ever said and will ever say that Test cricket is dying.

We won’t let it die, because we will keep watching.

Written by lemayol, aka the only person who watched the Zimbabwe vs New Zealand Test in its entirety.

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