Practice makes perfect
It says something about the crowded nature of the international fixture list and the reduced expectations for preparation that the Australia coach Darren Lehmann was pleased to announce at the start of his side’s tour of Sri Lanka that his side had “come over here a little bit earlier than we normally would” in order to better acclimatise to conditions.
Australia played only two and a half days of cricket in the country before the first Test. Yes, they scored 474 against a Sri Lankan XI at the P Sara Oval in their sole tour match, and won by an innings and 162 runs, though in retrospect it seems notable that the off-spinner Shehan Jayasuriya took five for 110 in their solitary batting innings. It meant Australia went into the Test series with only one of their top-order batsmen – Joe Burns – having faced more than 100 deliveries in a competitive game in the country. This with a touring squad of whom only two players – Usman Khawaja and Nathan Lyon – had ever previously played Test cricket in Sri Lanka.
You’ll be familiar with what followed. Kusal Mendis’s extraordinary 176 in the second innings at Pallekele (aided and abetted by nine wickets for Rangana Herath and seven from slow-left-armer Lakshan Sandakan) setting up a 106-run victory in the first Test and, in the second Test in Galle, the off-spinner Dilruwan Perera taking six for 70 in the second innings (and match figures of 10 for 99) to propel the hosts to a 229-run win and an unassailable 2-0 lead in the series.
Such was the Australian’s batting lineup’s haplessness and the Sri Lankan spinners’ collective excellence extra game-time before the first Test may have been a sticking plaster on a gaping wound, but events in Galle provided an interesting contrast to the third Test between England and Pakistan.
Pakistan did not send a full-strength team for their tour match at Worcester after the second Test but those who did turn out felt the benefit. Azhar Ali was perhaps the most obvious beneficiary. Having begun the tour in good nick – he scored 101 against Somerset in Taunton and 145 at Hove against Sussex prior to the first Test – he had flopped in the Tests, with seven and 23 at Lord’s, and one and eight at Old Trafford. But he rediscovered his mojo with 81 against Worcestershire and returned to the Test arena with 177 runs at Edgbaston.
Sami Aslam, having missed out on the first two games, got his first taste (albeit a brief one) of first-class cricket in England and went on to score 82 and 70 at Edgbaston. Sohail Khan did enough to persuade the selectors he was a better bet than Wahab Riaz and took five for 96 on day one. Kinks were ironed out, decisions were made. The Test results may have been the same but given the contrast between Pakistan’s performances at Old Trafford and Edgbaston, though both losing efforts, it seems fair to suggest that that trio, and therefore the team as a whole, found some benefit from their jaunt to New Road.
Of course, this absence of acclimatisation is a fairly new issue in the game. Australia’s tour in 1989, for example, began with a one-day game against the League Cricket Conference on 5 May and they went on to face a Duchess of Norfolk’s XI, Sussex, MCC, Worcestershire, Somerset, Middlesex, Yorkshire, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Glamorgan, Scotland, Minor Counties, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Kent, Essex, the Netherlands (twice) and Denmark (twice), the final game, in Copenhagen, taking place on 6 September. In between those commitments they managed to squeeze in six Ashes Tests (winning four and drawing two) and three ODIs.
But it is not only preparation time that has been lost with the demise of tour matches. Also absent now is that sense of a team genuinely touring the country, becoming part of the sporting fabric of another nation for a few months or for an entire summer, not just popping in for their ICC-approved minimum. And many a tall cricketing tale has hinged on a sparsely attended match in some far flung destination against a local XI.
Perhaps the most remarkable tour match story was West Indies’ fateful trip to Ireland in 1969. It was not a full-strength Windies side that took the field at Sion Mills in County Tyrone that summer but the team for the two-innings one-day game still featured five of the XI who had drawn the second Test at Lord’s two days prior. On a damp, green wicket they were reduced to 12 for nine before a last-wicket stand more than doubled the score to 25 all out. Ireland then sportingly declared their innings on 125 for eight to allow the tourists another go, Basil Butcher scoring a half-century as some sense of normality was restored and West Indies ended the match at 78 for four.
It is a bit of a stretch but a tour match can also lay claim to having affected the course of Ashes history. On that 1989 tour, county sides had been offered a share of £25,000 for wins over the Australians in a well-meaning but slightly ill-conceived attempt to ensure more competitive games. It meant the counties unveiled some rather fiery pitches in order to produce results. Allan Border, already showing a more hard-edged demeanour, took his side to Derbyshire for the final warm-up game before the Test series. The bombardment he and his team received from Devon Malcolm and Ian Bishop (added, it seems, to some disappointing pizza served up at lunch) was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Border finally resolved “show the bastards” in the first Test.
Given the calendar pressures now on the modern game there is, of course, no going back. But if Test cricket is to survive, there is a need for competitive matches. For competitive matches, touring teams need to have some semblance of an idea of how to play in otherwise alien conditions. That, surely, is reason enough for tour games not be the afterthought they so often seem to be.
