0Test omdlalo wekhilikithi - sazi kanjani ngiwusindise?

Emuva ngenyanga kaMashi ngonyaka owedlule (Hewu, ngempela ukuthi kudala??) Mina waloba missive emfushane ngekusasa test omdlalo wekhilikithi futhi yini engase yenzeke kulowo mdlalo eminyakeni ezayo. 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.

kababaningi abahlakaniphileyo (futhi ezithile ezingahlakaniphile) 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, Nokho. 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, Engisazohlangana nikuzwe.

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. Amabhulogi kule sayithi, Ngokuvamile esandleni sami siqu, 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, Nokho, a real­ist and recog­nise that we can’t beat it, ngakho kungani ungazindli ukujoyina it (kuze kube sezingeni lokuba).

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.

Ungakwazi mix ngisho 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. Ngenxa snob test nomdlalo (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.