In spite of the dull, lifeless pitches – the inevitable result of playing cricket in a desert – upon which the recent Pakistan v England test series was played, the cricket was at times compelling. But,  two things marred this series (and many other series for that matter) for me: the toss and bad light. What is most frustrating is there is a simple answer in both cases – get rid of it. Let’s take these one at a time.

The Toss

The idea of having a toss at the start of a match to decide who bats first seems fair enough, but all too often the toss is the single most important factor in deciding the outcome of the match, especially if the two teams are pretty evenly matched. In the Pakistan series, the “home” team won the toss in all three matches. Unlike in some conditions, where winning the toss gives a captain a tricky decision, winning the toss in the UAE, or most of Asia for that matter gives a significant advantage. Bat first and watch the pitch break up until it really starts to take turn on the last day when you should be bowling.
The home team, however, already has a big advantage – they are playing in conditions to which they are accustomed. So, why not even this up by allowing the away team the choice of who bats first. This does away with the element of chance and maximises the likelihood of a close contest, which must be what we all want.

Bad Light

Another frequent bane of test matches is bad light. Teams (all teams) get through their overs at a ludicrously slow rate. I’m not going to get onto that particular rant now, but it is safe to say that one of the results of it is that play goes beyond the scheduled hours of play almost every day of every test match. These days, the maximum by which a day can be extended is 30 minutes, but even so, matches are scheduled at times when it is clearly not possible to complete that extra 30 minutes without the light becoming to poor for play, so the public is robbed of cricket for which they have paid and occasionally, an otherwise tense, exciting finish is replaced by the depressing, anti-climactic spectacle of the light meters coming out and the plays walking off.

We saw exactly that in the 1st test in Dubai. After four days a tedium, an electric finish was set up by some fine English bowling coupled with suicidal Pakistani batting. England required 99 to win off 19 overs – a target that should have been straight forward. But, the light was fading and Pakistan contrived to bowl their overs at a rate that would have been embarrassingly shameful, were it not for the fact that every team in world cricket would have done exactly the same. The problem was not the players, but weak umpiring. The umpires just stood by and watched the time wasting antics and then, at the expected time, out came the light meters and off they all walked.

Back in 2000 at Karachi, a strikingly similar situation was overcome by the excellent umpiring of Steve Bucknor who kept play going on into much worse gloom on the basis that Pakistan could and should have got the overs in in perfectly good light. 15 years on and the new generation of umpires, completely emasculated by the ICC had no such backbone.

It seems safe to assume that the ICC will never provide their umpires with powers and sanctions to actually force a sensible over rate. If they were ever going to do this, surely they would have done so by now. Fortunately, the bad light problem is even easier to solve than the toss. Get rid of it. Remove it from the laws of the game entirely. At the start of a match, everyone know what the hours of play will be and that they can be extended by up to 30 minutes (there are further provisions for the last hour or the last day, but the details are not critical to the general argument). Play should then take place at that time. Play is not abandoned if it’s a bit windy, or hot, or humid. Dim light should be seen as a similar phenomenon. If the hours of play (and sadly, that is a big if) are chosen sensibly very poor conditions should not be experienced, especially as most test grounds now have lights. And, the argument for player safety is simply does not hold any water.

Outside of Britain, audiences for test cricket (the only real form of cricket for those of us who really care about the game) have dwindled alarmingly. But, test cricket can be intriguing, fascinating, compelling and exciting if only it is given a chance. Come on ICC – over to you.