0Test match cricket — how do we save it?

Back in March last year (wow, really that long ago??) I penned a brief missive about the future of test match crick­et and what might hap­pen to the game in the years to come. Inspired by watch­ing a fas­cin­at­ing dual between bat and ball as Bangladesh took on Sri Lanka I waxed lyr­ic­al about the game and the subtle battles and tac­tic­al rami­fic­a­tions that make test crick­et, well test­ing. Unfor­tu­nately, you may recall dear read­er, the art­icle was nev­er­the­less based on a sad note – the crowd – or more accur­ately the lack of the crowd – rejoicing in the contest.

Many wise (and some unwise) sages have put their think­ing caps on to pon­der how to bet­ter push the claims of test match crick­et. Test match crick­et is a dis­cip­line that must not be allowed to die. It is the very essence of crick­et and at the very apex of the won­der­ful game. If test match crick­et dies then so too does the heart and soul of the sport.

Few argu­ments or sug­ges­tions have suc­ceeded in per­suad­ing me that they offer a solu­tion in safe­guard­ing this future, how­ever. Vari­ous examples have been thrust for­ward but they have ten­ded to be ill-thought out and too simple. A test match league is one such brain­wave. All well and good on paper but not so simple in prac­tice. A level play­ing field would be too dif­fi­cult to achieve because of the num­ber oppos­ing vari­ables that define the game. The rank­ing sys­tem is already daft and in need of reform and a league table would no doubt have its found­a­tions in it. Play­ing less or more crick­et is anoth­er sug­ges­tion – but which? Less test match crick­et and how do the asso­ci­ate nations ever hope to get a look in if you reduce the num­ber of games and keep it to already estab­lished sides? More crick­et and there’s the risk of dilut­ing the product and filling an already busy fix­ture list. What about cheap­er tick­ets? Neces­sary but unlikely to res­ult in massive gains overnight.

So I have devised a far more rad­ic­al approach – some­thing new to throw into the melt­ing pot that takes our think­ing much more out­side the box. If it has been sug­ges­ted pre­vi­ously, I’ve yet to hear it.

There is no doubt that T20 crick­et, and in par­tic­u­lar the Indi­an Premi­er League is a suc­cess if you meas­ure it in the crude terms of com­mer­cial and fin­an­cial mark­ers and the massive media cov­er­age it enjoys. Blogs on this site, often from my own hand, have cri­ti­cised the IPL and T20 crick­et in gen­er­al for a lack of class and I am not depart­ing from that view. It remains in my mind a glor­i­fied game of base­ball, rep­res­ent­ing the crass celebrity cul­ture in which we live with bright lights, loud bangs and that bloody horn in the audi­ence thrown in for good meas­ure. I am, how­ever, a real­ist and recog­nise that we can’t beat it, so why not join it (to an extent).

My sug­ges­tion is that we keep on play­ing test match crick­et as we cur­rently do, per­haps with a tinker­ing around the edges and a review of the rank­ings sys­tem. Then at the end of the year we have a new com­pet­i­tion which is a T20 play off between the test teams. It will replace the IPL so that the celebrit­ies will still have an event they can get involved with and those not able or unwill­ing to appre­ci­ate the subtle nuances of test crick­et can fol­low. All money made from the event will then be fed back into the test match arena – to help devel­op the discipline.

You can even mix it up a bit. Each test team would be able to add to the side a set num­ber of play­ers (per­haps 2) of any nation­al­ity who haven’t played test match crick­et before or have retired – one of each. It would have to be a small num­ber so as to either stop entirely or greatly reduce the num­ber of play­ers who retire from the test arena so they can stick to play­ing a few weeks a year for a big fat pay cheque in the IPL

Restric­tions would also be placed on test sides to pre­vent them pick­ing play­ers in their test squad who they nev­er use but are kept as T20 specialists.

It could also be used as an oppor­tun­ity for Asso­ci­ate Mem­bers to try and gain test level status. The test team that is ranked low­est going into the tour­na­ment is at risk of los­ing their test status if they fail to per­form in the competition.

It’s not a per­fect solu­tion and I’m open to oth­er ways of hon­ing it down as ulti­mately this needs to be a money mak­ing ven­ture. As a test match snob (I wear this term as a badge of hon­our) I won’t have any interest in the com­pet­i­tion but if it helps to safe­guard our won­der­ful game then we have to look at it.