It appears that the cricket authorities are finally waking up to the fact that Test Match Cricket is not in an entirely healthy state across the globe. The growth in the popularity of the short forms of the games has resulted in very low crowds for test cricket in some parts of the world. As someone who thinks that test cricket is the only important international form of the game, this is desperately bad news, but it has been building for quite some time. Personally, I am bemused by this. I am constantly told by commentators that the cricket fans in India are really knowledgeable, but all of the evidence suggests otherwise – they can only fill a stadium if the players are wearing pyjamas.

The only countries that clearly give a shit about test cricket are England, Australia and South Africa. It’s hard to be sure about Pakistan and the West Indies, but I am prepared to give the benefit of the doubt in both cases. Pakistan have been obliged to play outside their own country for so long that it is impossible to gauge the immediate popularity of test cricket at home. However, I find it hard to believe that a test match against almost any opposition in Lahore would fail to draw a full house. And, whilst the way that Pakistan play cricket does work in the short form, it works better in the longer form. Most all of the truly great Pakistan cricketers have been bowlers and test cricket is the only form where bowlers can be the stars.

West Indies is a harder case to argue. 20 years ago, WI fans were great value and test cricket was clearly what they cared about. More recently,when England tour, we buy a lot of tickets, especially at Barbados and completely skew the statistics. However, the pitches prepared for recent tours suggest that the authorities are more interested in 5 days of drunken tourist excess than a good cricket match. When other countries tour, the stadiums are empty.

Day Night Tests

in the last few years there has been  a big push for Day Night tests. The big blocker was the ball. Recent trials between Australia and New Zealand with a pink lacquered ball seem to have gone reasonably well. Fair enough. In parts of the world where dew is not an issue this seems like a reasonable idea. But, let’s  be clear on why the desire for day-night matches exists. It is because people are not prepared to give up a day of their annual leave in order to attend a day at the test match.

In some parts of the world this might work and I do not oppose the concept. In Britain, however, I think the idea is crap. We have dew issues throughout almost the whole of the year and this really would compromise the fairness of matches. Furthermore, in  Britain the suggestion is to resolve a problem that does not exist. Test matches are very well attended, thank you very much.

Joint Series

The latest bullshit idea to come from the ECB (you really would think Andrew Strauss would know better) is this idea of scoring across multiple formats to make up a series. What is worse, a test match is worth only twice the value of an ODI or T20 match. This means that in the current Sri Lanka tour of England, 12 points  are available for the 3 test matches, 10 points for the 5 ODIs and 2 points for the single T20. Bah! CricInfo even has a points table – what a nonsense.

A test series is a test series. You can combine the ODIs andT20s all you like – I don’t give a damn. But, combining test results with comedy cricket – that can’t be right. This was introduced for women’s cricket, where the semi-professional nature of the game means that only one test is possible. This is not the case in the men’s game. A test series should consist of at least 3 matches and it should stand on its own merits. The proliferation of 2 match series is not good news, but this summer at least, we do not have this problem.

If this is an attempt to make test cricket more “relevant”, then it is misguided. If, as seems more likely, it is an attempt to make people who care about test cricket care a bit more about pyjama cricket, then it is cretinous. Do not try to force me to care about the rubbish product by devaluing the real product. How dare you? Strauss – you should be ashamed.