Are some sports just crisis junkies? Less than a week into a new decade cricket already needs rescuing again. So forget all you can of the past six months – a World Cup final that stood alone in history, one of the greatest ever Test comebacks, the good-news expansion of top-tier nations – and concentrate, if you will, on the negatives. Test cricket just isn’t popular enough. And that, the combined wisdom of the international cricket authorities has decided, means it’s too long. Apparently we should all start getting used to the idea that in future, Test matches will be played over four, not five, days.
To be fair, we’re all feeling a little bloated. It’s the week after the week after Christmas, a time of the year when our bodies are constituted of 70% mincemeat. No one feels at their best right now. This is the moment we take a long, hard look at ourselves and wonder if we could do with trimming a bit of fat. Does this five-day fixture really suit me any more? Wouldn’t a little nip/tuck make for an altogether more attractive prospect?
I get where the insecurity is coming from, I really do. It’s hard to compete on the open market when you’ve already been knocking around for over a century and everyone’s talking about how sexy your young cousins are. God, didn’t the World Cup final look good in that super over? And isn’t T20 so hot right now? No wonder Test cricket feels unloved by comparison. It just bothers me that it’s become so desperate and insecure it feels the need to lop bits off itself.
Especially since no one – no one that follows it, plays it or turns up at their nearest ground once a year to drink beer while it happens somewhere in the background – has a fundamental problem with the format as it currently exists. Even the strongest advocates of this four-day wheeze – who include the former England captain Michael Vaughan – admit that nothing can compare with the five-day game as an ultimate battle of skill and character.
So, have hours of focus grouping discovered that the one thing preventing people engaging with cricket is that it’s 24 hours too long? No. If they had, you can bet that the cricket boards – who frequently appear to care less about the people who love their sport than notional “future audiences” – would be telling us so.
Four-day Test matches won’t make for a better game, just a more financially convenient one. As we know, venues take a hit when games don’t make it to the final day, and yes, it’s annoying for broadcasters, too, who have to fill their Monday scheduling with cheap archive footage. More Tests than ever are finishing within four days – an indication that either wickets are getting better at producing results or that batters don’t know how to hang around any more. Now the money men are looking on those unfulfilled hours of play with the same greedy eyes a property developer gives, say, school playing fields.
Aside from maximising profits, any number of sham arguments are being thrown up as to why four-day Tests would be good for the game. There’s a saintly suggestion being wafted around that players will get the extra time back as preparation or rest days: this from the very boards who overstuffed the cricketing calendar in the first place. If you believe this one, then the 2010s really did do a number on you, and I’m sorry. On the plus side, you’ve only four months to wait for the arrival of the Easter Bunny.
Even more specious are the claims that we’ll all enjoy four-day cricket more – honest – because teams will be forced to hurry the game along. These conveniently ignore two well-known factors in Test cricket: weather and attrition. With no slack in which to make up time lost to rain, and bowlers battling fatigue after a 98-over day in the field, shortened Test matches will actually make draws more likely, not less.
As for the idea that captains will have to get more creative with edgy declarations and fourth-innings run gambles, is anyone really keen for Test cricket to start relying on artificial contrivances, or penalising the side that’s been ahead all game? Cricket fans don’t love Test matches because of their minute-by-minute entertainment value. Their true value lies in their long‑form tug-of-war, one that rewards stamina, smarts and superior skill. We accept a certain amount of boring passages of play as a natural consequence of the game’s grander narrative. We love our sport for what it is, not in spite of what it is.
Perhaps Test cricket isn’t perfect right now. The prioritisation of the white-ball game in the schedule has led to a marked drop-off in some of the technical requirements the five-day game has always demanded. If the worry is that it is somehow becoming a devalued currency, then amputating its final day, and diluting its essence, can only accelerate that process.
In fact, nothing has been more irritating about the proposal of the four-day Test than the paternalistic arrogance that presents it as the only way for the game to survive – an inevitability the rest of us will have to accept. By this logic the sport now belongs, exclusively, to the money men, and the desires of the people who actually follow the game – who pay for tickets, and TV subscriptions – have become irrelevant.
If international cricket needs rescuing from anything, it’s itself.
