Are four-day Tests cricket's salvation or a knee-jerk reaction?

Currently there is an MCC cricket committee meeting in Adelaide to discuss, among other things, the possibility of truncating Test cricket matches into four days.

For many this is seen as the potential saviour of Test cricket, an outdated form of the game which has been in steady decline for some decades with regard to public interest, sponsor investment and, in some cases, player care-factor.

The guardians of cricket should openly canvass all possibilities, and should not be continually assessing what the best options are for the game.

But at the same time, anyone prepared to offer a firm opinion prior to watching how this inaugural day-night Test plays out either has a fixed agenda, or is a fool.

What if Mitchell Starc gets the pink ball hooping around corners and the Kiwis are rolled for 50? What if the ball does nothing and Kane Williamson bats for two full days without playing a false shot? What if the ball hoops around but Williamson still bats for two days anyway?

Or what if, after 40 overs, nobody can see the ball properly on TV, and despite the Nine Network commentary team inevitably insisting that everything is hunky dory, viewers switch off once the curiosity value wears thin?

One also wonders what weight will be placed on any recommendations made by a committee where the majority vote is not held by the BCCI? In short, if India wants this to happen it will, if they don’t, it won’t.

With that rider on the table, there is still an interesting discussion to be had about four-day Test matches.

The proposal effectively seeks to schedule Test cricket in a similar way as to how golf tournaments are arranged – play begins on a Thursday and climaxes late on Sunday afternoon. Such a format would potentially open up greater commercial possibilities, with sponsors, broadcasters and viewers provided with greater certainty and consistency.

Another touted benefit is that lopping a day off goes some way to addressing the issue that Test cricket has become boring. Logically, shortening the match speeds up the game, and increases the likelihood of maintaining spectator interest.

Advocates have also linked the idea to improving existing slow over-rates, although it isn’t clear as to why this problem can be solved in a four-day match but not a five-day match.

In order to counter the loss of a day’s play, the proposal offers the possibility of adding 10 overs per day to the existing 90 overs, thus – according to former Australian Test captain Mark Taylor, a notable proponent of the idea – losing “only 50 overs in total”.

Only 50 overs.

One-day cricket took root in the 1960s in English county cricket, designed to fill in the schedule in what was regarded as the world’s premier cricket league. Internationals began in the 1970s but the game really took off as a vehicle for the introduction of World Series Cricket in 1975.

Many new followers were gained as a result, including people who never had the patience or inherent understanding of cricket to warm to the five-day game.

But another generation later, the idea of a cricket match covering one whole day was beginning to prove too much for many, hence the arrival of T20, a bashathon aimed fairly and squarely at a younger, entertainment-seeking demographic.

Anyone detect a trend here? It is not too difficult to see where the game is heading next (as this article from last year outlines)?

In this context, the push for four-day Tests can be seen for what it is – an attempt to appease people who are, for the most part, not really followers of Test cricket anyway.

Are everyday people really going to sit up and take closer interest in Test cricket because it runs for four days instead of five?

And what about the promise of engineering thrilling conclusions to Test matches to lead into the Sunday evening news bulletin? Great if it happens, but anyone who follows 50-over cricket and even T20 cricket knows the reality that edge-of-seat, final-over finishes are the exception rather than the rule.

In tournament golf, tee times are fixed and the order of play arranged so that a climax is usually achieved when the final group reaches the 18th hole, more or less at a predicted time.

Cricket, however, contains far more variables. Under this proposal, perhaps a more likely Sunday evening outcome is the side batting fourth playing out a draw, because there is insufficient time left in the game for them to be bowled out? Partly perhaps because there is insufficient wear in the pitch to assist, and partly perhaps because any weather interruption is not able to be absorbed into the five-day framework.

Committee member, former Australian Test off-spinner Tim May suggests that a move to four-day Tests will diminish the role of spinners in Test cricket. I’m not so sure this is a valid objection; certainly in limited-over forms of the game spinners retain a key role. Most often, in any form of the game, it comes down to the best bowlers having the greatest influence, be they fast or slow.

Others horrified by the potential change are those statistically minded types, who revel in all of the glorious facts and figures that permeate through Test cricket. It is likely that an abbreviated form of Test cricket, with potentially earlier declarations in all innings, will start to skew player stats, and render much of what has gone before meaningless.

Another potential problem is that not all the locations where Test cricket is played will be able to consistently fit 100 overs of play in per day. After all, not all Test grounds are blessed with the climate and facilities of Adelaide.

The one argument that the ‘progressives’ undoubtedly have right is that cricket must not succumb to hubris. It is right to trial day-night Test cricket, and it is right to at least explore ways in which the game can be improved and remain relevant in a changing business, social and sporting environment.

But that is not the same thing as reacting in a knee-jerk way to fixing something that is either not as broken as some might think, or what in fact may never be fixable anyway – if the only means of fixing it are to render it unrecognisable from its essence.

Test cricket has as its core the premise of testing the best against the best, over a period of time sufficient to allow for a contest to take shape, then ebb and flow as tactics, stamina and skill come into play. That is cricket’s purest joy.

To this end, it is hard to conceive how four-day Test cricket serves the betterment of the format. It would merely become something else altogether.

Those who love Test cricket, players and fans alike, know they are a minority, but they will have a firm message for those slaves to marketing pitches and TV ratings who would see things change on a whim:

“You already have two manufactured forms of the game to play around with at your leisure. We don’t care if Chris Gayle never plays Test cricket again because it doesn’t suit his lifestyle. Leave five-day Test cricket alone.”