A Test cricket day is seven hours long (or more, considering modern over rates). A match extends for an entire working week. Amazingly, a contest of this length, which does not change in its objective for the length of the battle, draws the undivided attention of its most ardent supporters for its entirety.
It has long periods of tight tussle, seemingly boring to the outsider but pivotal to the connoisseur. For lovers of the game, Test cricket is like a concerto to admirers of classical music. To me a Mozart symphony may sound good or bad, but I only understand its overall beauty. I cannot claim to understand the different notes, when one instrument is played well or poorly, or what impact a different conductor can have on how a piece is performed.
Similarly, to the casual observer, Test cricket has periods of no interest, in which no runs are being scored nor wickets taken, but to the cricket lover each delivery is a piece in the large evolving puzzle that is only completely formed when a Test match concludes.
No other sporting contest that lasts this length of time is watched entirely and unflinchingly by its fans. Who sits in front of their television and does not move for the two weeks of the Olympics? But the way modern cricket is played, with its win-at-all-costs attitude and saturation coverage from a 24-hour media cycle, starts to take away some of the pleasing aspects of a beautiful game.
Viewing an entire day of Test cricket on television often leaves you worn out, wondering where the day went, and with a mild sense of depression, speculating whether you really do like cricket. All of modern cricket’s stoppages for the repositioning of sightscreens, umpteen drinks breaks and innumerable field changes, infuriatingly slow the game down, taking the pleasure away from a day in front of the box.
You can see the bored look of the fieldsman, the waving arms of the perturbed batsman, and anguished frustration of the umpires as they vainly attempt to gain the attention of a lone cameraman apparently in the batsman’s eye-line twenty metres wide of midwicket, and it helps you realise that all you are doing is watching people at work.
It is not a passionate game of sport, an intense but fun rivalry. It is just a group of arrogant self-absorbed young men, trying to achieve success purely to earn money, keep their place in the team and stroke their egos, as they place their entire self-worth into what they can do within the boundary. This haughtiness is fuelled by a starstruck media, willing to label every successful performance as legendary, heroic or wonderful, as if each headline titles an article about those in cream having saved a person from a house fire, rather than having captured five wickets in a cricket match.
With the ever-expanding number of international teams, the intensity that surrounds Test cricket is lessening even for its most ardent supporters. The concept only survives because of the Ashes cycle, and even the mystery and desire around that contest was only sparked back to life with the magic of the 2005 cliffhanger and the resurgence of English cricket.
While the era of political correctness and media advisers means they would never verbalise it, the players feel the melancholy, and judging by the crowds in Brisbane and Hobart the paying public does too. Australia spent years trying to maintain the sanctuary of Test cricket by only awarding matches to those nations who had proven themselves worthy, but is now overburdened with the amount of not just Test cricket, but one day internationals, Twenty20 and domestic 20-over tournaments, many offering more money than the traditional game that devalue each match.
The obvious and real passion showed by the New Zealand team after their close win over Australia in Hobart on Monday shows a team for which Test victory still actually means something, and is just not another game in the ‘process’. In that process, each match is about rotation and resting players to ensure continual fitness for a 12-month never-ending cycle of cricket, rather than giving entire focus to the game at hand.
The Black Caps played just five Test matches, 17 one-day matches and two Twenty20 games in 2011. Compare this to Australia which played 39 international matches across three different continents. The Australian team and Cricket Australia’s attitude to the international game is starting to resemble county cricket in 1970s and 1980s.
Playing a profusion of meaningless matches, players are becoming worn professionals interested in just finishing and getting home, and carrying their teammates through to the end of the season, rather than putting out the best team to try to achieve victory in every match.
With modern cricket like all other professional sports now an entertainment industry, it is unlikely that the international game, at least in Australia, will have the same meaning again.
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