0New Zealand 0–0 England: Good for Test Cricket

It’s not often you’ll hear me cheer a series where all of the test matches fin­ished in draws, and it’s even less often that I cel­eb­rate Eng­land fail­ing to win a series.  How­ever that is exactly how I feel about the recent drawn series in New Zea­l­and.  Now before the barmy army hang draw and quarter me, give me a chance to explain myself!

Lets start with the most import­ant thing; the qual­ity of enter­tain­ment on offer.  Most drawn matches these days are due to someone pre­par­ing a wick­et which hugely favours bats­men.  These “con­crete wick­ets” as I tend to call them have fre­quently been found in parts of the sub­con­tin­ent in recent times, with India and Sri Lanka in par­tic­u­lar rack­ing up some gigant­ic scores.  These kind of draws don’t provide the level of excite­ment the pub­lic are entitled to expect from Test crick­et.  For­tu­nately the wick­ets in New Zea­l­and were excel­lent — they all offered some­thing to both bats­man and bowl­er, and did so quite con­sist­ently across all 5 days.  As a res­ult all 3 matches were excit­ing, and in all 3 cases at the start of the 5^th day a res­ult was still very pos­sible for at least 1 side.  The stand­ard of crick­et was­n’t always quite at the peak, but it was­n’t far short and thee were some ter­rif­ic per­form­ances from play­ers on both sides.

So, we were all thor­oughly enter­tained, but that isn’t enough for me to get away with my open­er.  What if Eng­land had won con­vin­cingly, as most people expec­ted?  I for one would­n’t have enjoyed it as much, I would have put it down to New Zea­l­and being uncom­pet­it­ive and would­n’t have had as much interest.  It isn’t actu­ally all that much fun thrash­ing an oppos­i­tion when it’s entirely expec­ted, unless that oppos­i­tion hap­pens to be Aus­tralia of course.  A com­pre­hens­ive Eng­land vic­tory would also have been demor­al­ising for New Zea­l­and and the home crowd and may have led to lower crowds and less atmo­sphere at the games.

Let me get to the real meat of my argu­ment though; for Test crick­et to con­tin­ue to thrive we need the crick­et to be excit­ing, but most of all we need every nation to feel like it can win matches and series.  A quick look at the West Indies decline (and the sub­sequent decline in the pas­sion for crick­et there), and a little of the same effect tak­ing hold in Aus­tralia at the moment gives ample warn­ing of what the future could hold.  All sup­port­ers of Test crick­et should want lots of com­pet­it­ive teams and close series.  New Zea­l­and exceeded expect­a­tions by not only get­ting a draw in the series, but by clearly being the bet­ter side over­all.  This is a great way to inspire and engage young home sup­port­ers in Test crick­et, and will hope­fully lead to an even more com­pet­it­ive New Zea­l­and team in the future.