Test match cricket is one of the very few sports that does not reward mediocrity. It’s not good enough to just be better than your opponent, you need to actually beat them.
To win a Test match you need to bowl out your opposition twice, rather than hang on by the skin of your teeth waiting for the clock to run out.
And it’s amazing how many Test matches can be decided within a session, or the space of a few balls. A moment of brilliance that can swing the pendulum of momentum your team’s way.
It’s a game of chess; you can’t just outplay your opponent, you need to outsmart them by being three steps ahead at all times. The captain plays a pivotal role in this more than any other sport, where he manages his bowlers and sets his fields for moments to strike. Within this lies the beauty of Test cricket.
To the uneducated viewer, it is but a slow, boring exhibition of men in white walking around a grassy paddock, but to us it is a strategic battle on a knife’s edge.
Test cricket is much more than a single ball going for six. More than an edge being taken in the slips off a perfectly pitched outswinger; the things that don’t get taken into account are the build of pressure from the three consecutive maidens bowled from the medium pacer at the other end. He never gets the credit.
One of my favourite cricket videos of all time showcases the most classic of all hoodwinks: the Shane Warne flipper. But what this video shows is the lead up, brilliantly commentated by the great Richie Benaud. Warne lets Daryll Cullinan hit two consecutive boundaries off him in the name of a wicket. Imagine being that confident that you give your opponent a couple of freebies and a confidence boost because you’re that far ahead of him.
Enough of my fawning, however. The stark truth is that the game we all love is dying slowly. Decades of money-grubbing by both national boards and the ICC has seen what should be the pinnacle of our sport, the Test match, demoted behind things like the appallingly commercialised IPL, or a laborious World Cup made to ensure the highest commercial audience possible.
Teams would rather tour for a half-dozen ODIs or T20 matches than for three Test matches because these have been made to be more lucrative. For some nations outside the ‘Big Three’ (India, Australia, and England), Test cricket is not even an afterthought, particularly Pakistan and the West Indies.
Not enough investment has been made in the game to make it viable, with the ICC lining their pockets and preferring franchise cricket to pay the players rather than making Test cricket a lucrative venture for both the players and themselves.
I admit being Australian I am largely shielded from all this, as Test cricket still sells out venues and the Boxing Day Test is one of the biggest days on the sporting calendar. We Australians don’t tend to see the Tests played in front of empty stadiums in the West Indies, or players having to walk through armed security to even enter the stadium when teams travel to the UAE to play Pakistan. We are duped into thinking everything is OK.
Recently I read an article by Andrew Miller in Cricinfo’s The Cricket Monthly magazine, talking about his views on what could be done to save Test cricket. The article was speculative and included many fanciful notions, but one sentence got me thinking:
“Could a franchise structure be adapted for Test cricket’s purposes?”
Could it? Trust me, after I finish writing this I will be taking a long shower because I feel dirty just suggesting it. But it does not appear that the ICC is taking any steps to expand or even maintain Test cricket in its current format. Emphasis is not being placed on it and, despite it ‘being cricket’, it’s not made to be desirable for nations at the lower end of the top level of cricket.
Unlike most other sports around the world, cricket has not wholly embraced the franchise mentality. Look at other large team sports: football, rugby union, baseball, basketball, gridiron, and even European sports like handball have a franchise base. Many of these, such as football and rugby, do still glorify the classic international clash, but the franchise in many cases is a bigger deal and has a larger commercial emphasis.
So how could the franchise idea be better in cricket? Money is one thing, but of course it all hinges on an international governing body that is progressive and expansionist rather than inclusive (a pipe dream, I know).
What makes Test cricket, and to some extent international cricket as a whole, largely unachievable for nations outside the Big Three is that the financial return they receive from international cricket are simply not enough. If franchises were developed, and the franchises were based solely in one of these Big Three countries, then the issue of smaller boards and associations not being able to afford international cricket goes away.
Instead, their best and brightest go into a draft system and get selected by any of these teams. The boards’ money can instead be used to grow the game in their countries rather than running a loss just trying to take their nations to international matches.
The other thing is a fan-base. The easiest thing for any sport fan to follow is the team from their local area, and that can be an argument against any franchise-based system. But look at, for example, the English Premier League. There are over a dozen divisions in English football, and any English person will follow their local team, however they’ll also have a Premier League team not necessarily within their local area.
Looking more worldwide, this competition’s fan-base has spread across the world, and you can walk down the streets of Bangkok and see a Manchester United or Liverpool jersey. In the absence of local connections, and with a large competition to follow, people will tack themselves onto a team or a player that grabs their fancy. Based in Kolkata or Canberra, I will follow pretty much any team that has Steve Smith or Dale Steyn in it.
Of course there are significant kinks that would need to be ironed out. It would probably need a complete overhaul of the ICC and the way cricket is structured, and thus probably won’t happen because of the exclusive nature of cricket at the moment. But just imagine the best 15 or 20 players from the top 15 or 20 nations going into a draft with the brand new franchises. This sounds like the IPL, but this is a cricket tournament and not an entertainment juggernaut, and would be marketed and set up completely differently to make it actually about the sport. It would be what the IPL could have been.
These franchises would be based in any one of Australia, England, or India, and the round-robin league with knockout matches to decide a winner would travel the world from season to season. One season in China, another in the USA. Seasons of course in Australia and India, England and South Africa.
I can guarantee that this format would have a much better chance at growing this great game of ours than the current setup.
I’m well aware that this is radical, and it is a pipedream, but is it entirely crazy? I’ll leave that judgement up to you.
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