Test cricket is one of sport’s most sacred entities. Since 1877, it has been, in both name and fact, the greatest test of a cricketer or his team. Thus, we must address a couple of facts.
Test cricket is played in white clothing with a red ball. A Test match goes for five days. A day’s play begins in the morning, usually at 10 or 11am, and ends in the early evening, around 5 or 6pm. Within these parameters, Test cricket has gained the love and affection of cricket’s most ardent fans.
While the non-cricketer may think it boring, dull, or overly long, a cricket enthusiast will love it for its complexities and simplicities. They admire the fact that rain can rapidly alter a match situation, or that after five days’ toil and intrigue, the result can come down to a single ball.
While one-day internationals and Twenty20 have their charms and fleeting excitement, they cannot provide the soaring drama of Edgbaston in 2005, or Brisbane in 1960.
Those who saw Tendulkar face Steyn in South Africa a couple of years ago insist upon it as cricket at its finest, a combat between a bat and a ball which was the best the game could produce. Test cricket is suspense. It is a suspense which cannot be replicated in the coloured clothing sideshows.
Simply, one-day and Twenty20 cricket are designed to lure the non-cricketer. The description of the innings break in a Twenty20 as ‘half time’ makes my blood run cold, but it is evidence of a game pitched firmly at football fans seeking summer sporting entertainment.
This is well and good. These are worthy devices for interesting people in cricket for the first time and augmenting the salaries of the game’s finest.
However these varieties must continue to be seen as the means to an end, rather than the end itself. They do not harm so long as they do not infringe upon Tests. Unfortunately, the disappearance of a Test from the schedule of the recent Australia v South Africa series indicates that confusion exists in the minds of administrators.
But then, confusion might not be the right word. The administrators of cricket are launching a very deliberate assault on Test cricket. They are attacking its history, its tradition and its greatest virtues by moves they have proposed, and some they have already taken.
Primary among these is the proposal for day-night tests. James Sutherland of Cricket Australia deserves most of the scorn for this scandalous idea. Cricket is not a circus. Cricket cannot be run for television ratings or gate takings. Pink ball, white ball or orange ball, Test cricket is a game which is played during daylight hours and always has been.
One day games and Twenty20 are more explosive, and perfectly designed for prime time. Test matches slowly unfold over the course of five days. Watching it unfold is the beauty of the game. If we change these basics to attempt to lure the apathetic masses, we risk taking cricket away from the people who have loved it all along.
The corporate point of view needs to be kept out of Test cricket. It is too precious to be left in the hands of people who have their own interests at heart rather than those of the game. The various forms of cricket raise funds in proportion to the rate at which runs are scored. Money men seek to destroy Test cricket because it fails to satiate their desire for quick cash.
But a game’s virtue must not be judged on whether it is ‘financially viable.’ If these toxic terms were abided by, we would have to consider the Sydney Olympic Stadium a greater venue for cricket than the SCG. We would think the renovations which stripped the Adelaide Oval of much of its beauty and charm did not quite go far enough. We would think that the appalling renaming of Bellerieve Oval was simply a ‘modern reality.’
The true reality is that Test cricket, the purest and greatest form of the game, cannot be tampered with by marketers any longer.
We must show these drones that Test cricket is the peak of the game. I urge you to go to a Test match this year. Take in the suspense and tension around the ground. If we do not make ourselves heard now, we will merely be left to enjoy Test cricket while it lasts.
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