0Four day test matches? no thanks!

With a few recent test matches fin­ish­ing in 3 or 4 days, there has been talk in some quar­ters about redu­cing test matches to 4 days. We’d like to give a resound­ing no thanks sent back to any such ideas.

A few quick res­ults is not suf­fi­ciently good reas­on to start cut­ting more time from test crick­et. What would 4 day tests really mean? Slow over rates or bad light already restrict the real­ist­ic num­ber of overs that can be bowled in a day, so fit­ting more overs in just isn’t real­ist­ic. So what it would really mean is cut­ting 20% off every test match. We already have 50-over crick­et. And 40-over crick­et. And 20-over crick­et. We don’t need even more “shortened” crick­et. Test matches, at 5 days, are well bal­anced, with a good pro­por­tion being played for all 5 days.

So, let’s stick to 5 day test matches and not encour­age any more T20-isa­tion of real cricket.