Warning signs have been looming on the horizon for years but now that Test cricket’s worrying future is in the spotlight, there has been plenty of talk from high-ranking officials.
They have officially raised concern in an officious way without offering anything of note to make the poorer nations optimistic.
Test cricket’s prospects are becoming so compromised that it is in danger of having a similar number of viable nations to rugby league.
For those of you who don’t follow league’s dubious international competition there’s basically three teams with any money, a couple more who have a fighting chance of upsetting the top dogs and then a handful of others who are basically making up the numbers.
One nation pretty much controls the purse strings – Australia – with England and New Zealand also having some clout.
Sound familiar? Test cricket, like the sport’s two other formats, revolves around the mother ship of India with Australia and England the only other nations who can be confident of putting their best XI on the field without worrying about the T20 franchises luring away their top talent.
New Zealand and Sri Lanka are still punching above their weight in the Test arena but have already started losing first-choice players to the T20 circuit/circus.
Pakistan are only just hanging on, the West Indies are a shell of their former selves while South Africa are giving up the five-day ghost, the saddest aspect of Test cricket’s decline because their administrators are prioritising T20 as its money spinner.
The Proteas proved in their Boxing Day home Test win over India that they are able but they showed with their embarrassing squad selections for their subsequent series in New Zealand that they’re not willing.
Their decision to send a second-string squad for the two-Test tour has many fans wondering whether the traditional format has reached its global tipping point.
Nick Hockley. (Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)
Cricket Australia chair Mike Baird and CEO Nick Hockley, along with players’ union boss Todd Greenberg, have responded by saying more needs to be done to divert finances to the nine Test-playing nations who are on the outside looking in at the wealth of India, Australia and England.
Their hearts seem to be in the right place and each of them appears genuine in their desire to save Test cricket from a grisly demise but talk is cheap. Real investment is needed to ensure the longest format has a lengthy future.
When the news cycle moves onto the next story and Test cricket’s gulf in class between the haves and have-nots is no longer making headlines, that’s when the executives need to come up with a plan to ensure some of the rivers of gold that are coming into the sport via the T20 explosion are diverted back to Tests. And put the plan into action.
Steve Waugh wants to see a premium playing fee introduced for all nations so that multi-format cricketers aren’t taking a massive pay cut to represent their country in red-ball contests.
Jasprit Bumrah celebrates a wicket for the Mumbai Indians against Chennai Super Kings. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
The former Australian captain’s idea has plenty of merit but even if the ICC opened up a huge slab of funding to boost the income for Test players at the poorer nations, will it still be anywhere near what a player could earn in the IPL, or one of the many other leagues now dotted across the globe?
And if a LIV Golf-style, Saudi Arabian-fuelled megabucks league gains traction, then there is no way the ICC will be able or necessarily bother to try to compete with that kind of moolah.
Another former Test skipper Greg Chappell gave cricket’s avaricious administrators a lashing on the weekend in his Herald/The Age column by blasting them for prostituting the sport on the T20 street corner.
“Cricket administrators, particularly the Board of Control for Cricket in India, are fairly and squarely to blame, for their avarice. Shamelessly chasing the TV dollar, but clueless and callously not doing enough to keep our greatest format alive while demanding bigger and extended periods for rubbish and more new rubbish. This prostitution of our game is complete but has to stop. The weed is strangling the formerly healthy plant.”
And even if the ICC comes up with a financial solution to keep the sport’s top-line talent (from all nations, not just three) engaged in Test cricket, it will take many years before countries like South Africa, the Windies and Pakistan are able to be truly competitive.
The ICC has made a big song and dance over the establishment of the World Test Championship as a vehicle to keep the format relevant but even though the Black Caps claimed the first title in 2021 before Australia lifted the trophy last year, how many of the 12 member nations are a legitimate chance of making the next final?
South Africa are virtually forfeiting their hopes by running dead in NZ, the Windies and Bangladesh started the race with next to no chance and that’s only diminishing while Ireland and Afghanistan barely get much in the way of games anyway so you can put a line through them – and Zimbabwe are struggling in all formats: they haven’t even qualified for the 20-team T20 World Cup and missed out on the past two 50-over tournaments.
(Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
Uganda and Namibia qualified ahead of them yet the cricketing public is being hoodwinked to swallow the spin that Zimbabwe are still one of the elite “Test-playing nations”.
The Black Caps and Sri Lanka won’t be pushovers and Pakistan have shown over the past month that they have some fight in their team but talent wise they are a tier down from the Big Three.
They don’t get to play India in bilateral Test series due to political reasons while they went down 3-0 to England and Australia in their most recent match-ups with them.
It all adds up to a very international rugby league state of affairs and that’s a sad indictment on Test cricket if it continues to draw those kinds of parallels.
Hopefully South Africa’s decision to tarnish the value of their team and Test cricket itself will prove to be a watershed moment.
The line in the sand that prompts administrators to finally take action to preserve something which is not only the traditional format but the greatest test for a cricketer.
Brett Allen
Roar Rookie
Well, the BCCI wasn’t interested in T20 cricket until India won the first T20 WC and the independent ICL was formed. There was a small window when the ICC might’ve got the jump on the BCCI, however even if they had done so, it’s most likely the BCCI would’ve simply leveraged their way into the same position they’re in now.
Brett Allen
Roar Rookie
What about players who don’t have national board contracts ?
Brett Allen
Roar Rookie
Haha
ExtraSundries
Roar Rookie
OMG … I had assumed we were talking about Narendra Modi!
Peter
Roar Rookie
They say that we ultimately end up with the democracy we deserve. Perhaps it is true of our entertainment too. How dumbed down can entertainment get than a game of T20 cricket. The few times that I have bothered to watch I have had the visceral sensation that my life force was ebbing from my body with each ball that was bowled.
Cam
Roar Rookie
No idea where it will end up. Cricket has been pretty fortunate in that it gets some clean air through the summer and doesn’t compete with the football codes. From a grassroots perspective, I have coached junior cricket the past decade and the numbers are still really good. The introduction of girls/womens cricket has definitely breathed new life into the sport. Last year our club had 110 junior players and for the first year ever, girls outnumbered the boys. If CA get a massive cash injection, I’d expect a decent portion will flow through to club and junior cricket, which should keep the code healthy for a bit. Personally I think the BBL works pretty well at the moment in part to the good percentage of squad members being local to the city/state. Aussies love their sport when there is some tribalism running through it.
DaveJ
Roar Rookie
Good questions. One not mentioned is the role of ODIs. With more T20s inevitable, one way to make space in the calendar would be to drop ODIs altogether. They are mostly pretty boring or uninteresting or seen as unimportant, outside the World Cup. The trouble is, the CWC can be exciting, brings in money, and seems a much better format for a World Cup than T20, which is so hit and miss. Cricket as a whole, however, will never get to the state of rugby league. Cricket is followed and played by hundreds of millions or more on six continents. Rugby league is hardly played outside NSW, Queensland, PNG, Auckland, Perpignan, and some declining industrial towns in northern England. By far the most farcical sporting competition in the world is the RL World Cup, where most of the teams - Greece! Jamaica! Lebanon! South Africa! Ireland and the Pacific Islands - are filled almost entirely by players from Australia, UK and NZ with some heritage from those places. Of the Samoan team that played Australia in the 2022 RL World Cup final, only 2 were born in Samoa, leaving at the age of 2 or 6, the rest born in Aus or NZ. 14 grew up and went to school in Australia (mostly Western Sydney) and 4 in NZ. Living for a number of years overseas I noticed that almost no one outside the UK had heard of rugby league at all, whereas many knew of the Rugby World Cup and had an interest in it, even in non-rugby playing countries. .
andyfnq
Roar Rookie
Sounds great, now get the BCCI people with their snouts in the trough to agree. That's the real issue, shortsightedness and greed
Sydneysider
Roar Rookie
Test cricket will be only played by a handful of countries in a decade. it's inevitable, the game takes up too much time (comparative to other sports) and resources. it will remain an exclusive club, and Cricket Australia will protect it's summer revenue streams, and rightly so.
Brett Allen
Roar Rookie
Especially since he is wanted in India for financial fraud after his IPL dealings. He lives in exile in London these days and the BCCI banned him for life in 2013 !!! Indian gangsters sent hitmen to kill him a few years ago. Pretty sure Lalit Modi is not gonna be much help, lol !!!
Brett Allen
Roar Rookie
Furthermore, its first class cricket and the lure of test cricket that produces the necessary standard of cricketer that makes T20 cricket successful in the first place. When the game is no longer producing that kind of well rounded talent, T20 cricket will suffer as well.
Brett Allen
Roar Rookie
1) Whilst some mergers are theoretically possible, and perhaps make sense, the reality is that each board has set up its own league to secure its own independent revenue stream to secure its finances. They aren't likely to give that up anytime soon. 2) As for a TWC, for it to be meaningful it would need to go for at least six weeks, bare minimum. Now tell me where in the already jam packed FTP could you fit that in, even once every four years ? And where would it be played. There are really only 4 genuine options, England in June-July, Australia in Nov-Jan, India in Feb-Mar, & South Africa in Nov-Jan. CA are simply not gonna want to give up its prime summer schedule for a bunch of tests that mostly won't feature Australia. Try to get a crowd for SL v Ire anywhere in Australia for at least three days ? CA is not gonna give up its bumper Boxing Day or NY crowds in Melbourne & Sydney. Even if you scheduled the Aussies to play those two tests, that means that the likes of the Brisbane, Adelaide & Perth aren't going to see the Aussies play that summer. The relevant state associations who actually do the hosting and derive a huge percentage of their future budget from hosting their annual test match would have a fit. No, CA won't want a bar of it. For the exact same reasons, neither will the English and South African boards. That leaves India, who are probably better placed to pull it off than anyone else, but even the recently completed ODi WC struggled to draw crowds for games not involving the big three. Furthermore, if you were to have India host it, you're basically giving the trophy to India directly as they simply don't lose test matches at home. Which leads to the real underlying issue, and is that test cricket is the format most affected by conditions. White ball cricket is set up in a way that ensures that wickets will be created within very narrow parameters by necessity. Test cricket allows for much greater leeway. A TWC held in India would be a farce. Test Match cricket operates best in a bilateral sense where teams get to know each other over an extended period, ideally over five games, and usually the home team will start well whilst the visiting team slowly builds into the series. The longer the series, the better the chance the visiting team has. A TWC would not allow for such development. No, the WTC Final is the only realistic option.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
I think my only redhead crush is Lauren Holly. She could Scorpio me to expiration
aerial lizard
Roar Rookie
Only one guarantee of a true blood nut.
Gibbo
Roar Pro
Here's a solution. Make the top 20 nations Test playing nations. Award monetary prizes (allotted from T20 riches) to nations that win bilateral series against each other. Force the top 3 nations in the world to play EVERYBODY (even Afghanistan, Ireland and the other smaller nations who would become Test nations under this scheme). Sure, there would be plenty of lopsided contests, but if the likes of Uganda and the UAE can get into the T20 World Cup where they get money for merely participating, what could they do if they were awarded financial benefits for beating the West Indies or Zimbabwe or Bangladesh in those international qualifying competitions? Plus, the more money the make, the more talent they can train. The ICC should really be paying for Test standard production in every single country (especially with the forced use of the DRS now), and they should be the ones pushing Test cricket to survive.
Ad Tastic
Roar Rookie
Outside of England and Australia nobody cares to watch test cricket, especially not at the ground. Sure you could throw a wad of cash at the problem. Governments do things like that to prop up failing industries. But the track record of that is hit and miss. Usually miss. You just end up spending more and more money to protect a worse and worse product and in the end those jobs go somewhere in Asia anyway. The market has spoken and I dont see anything anybody can do about that.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
Mergers generally create more money for someone, which is why the European Super League soccer was thought up, so it isn't unlikely it could happen.
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
Some personal connection, or a test cricket honour of some sort (I freely admit this might not work).
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
1) Some merger is possible, as several T20 leagues are in different countries with different players. 2) There's no way at all that a Test Championship is logistically impossible. Expain why?
kingplaymaker
Roar Guru
If South Africa were actually threatened with being shut out of test cricket they might back down