Test stage to be for gentlemen amateurs
Trent Boult loves test cricket, but his mates couldn’t care less. There are no droves of people grazing the grassy banks of Seddon Park. New Zealand has decided that it has better things to do with its time than watch 11 mainly second-rate West Indians trying to make a long game last an extra day.
Test cricket is looking increasingly hopeless. The big teams don’t really want to play the Black Caps anymore, because it’s just not worth it. The only team who wants regular cricket against New Zealand is Pakistan and that’s because no-one else wants to play them. It’s ghastly to say, but it appears that only the threat of terrorism can guarantee New Zealand cricket ever year.
Next year New Zealand plays 10 one-dayers, four T20s and three test matches against Pakistan. And there is more of the same in 2019, just as there has been for the previous few years. Pakistan are the only guys who will give us a regular game. So can you blame the crowd if they have started to lose interest.
They look across the ditch and they see the Ashes going on between Australia and England and the games really matter. England were in dire straits in the second test, but when they got halfway to the futile victory target, the Barmy Army burst into song with, ‘‘We’re halfway there, living on a prayer’’.
There’s sledging and headbutting and players throwing drinks over their team-mates. If a Black Cap threw a drink over a team-mate, I’m not sure that anyone would notice. It is very sad, because this is a fine team, but it’s just not relevant.
‘‘I love test cricket,’’ said Boult after day two of this test, ‘‘so I’d love to see it stay as it always has.’’
Look, I sympathise. I’m with the playwright Tom Stoppard who said after seeing live baseball for the first time: ‘‘I hardly think that I can be expected to take seriously a game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion.’’
But who saw the tears when Ross Taylor was talking after joining his mentor Martin Crowe and his skipper Kane Williamson as the only New Zealanders to have scored 17 test centuries.
Taylor saw a butterfly, reminding him of Crowe who said before he died that he would be the butterfly flying past out in the middle.
And maybe that is what test cricket now is, bar a few games played between the likes of india, England, Australia and perhaps South Africa. It is a game watched by ghosts and butterflies.
It is a remembrance of times past when young boys like Neville Cardus used to anticipate games all winter long and pack their bag full of sandwiches and autograph books and pencils and scorecards.
There are still a few kids about on the banks but they are more interested in missing school than misspelling Kraigg Brathwaite on their homemade scorecards. And why should they be interested.
Chris Gayle, the Bravo brothers, Kieron Pollard, Sunil Narine, Darren Sammy, Marlon Samuels, Andre Russell, Danesh Ramdin, none of them are here. They’re all whacking the ball onto the roof of some far pavilion. They can earn far more money on the
T20 circuit. The West Indies will only pick them if they play longform cricket at home and that would cost them a lot of money.
But they are not the only ones. Brendon McCullum, the biggest drawcard in New Zealand cricket, could still be playing, but he too is chasing his pension. After signing up for another bash-fest McCullum went on stage and said: ‘‘All of us are‚ sort of‚ unashamed T20 mercenaries these days.’’
T20 is what the world wants to see. India is mad about the stuff.
T20 is what the world wants to see. India is mad about the stuff. Their test ratings have dropped by a half in the last few years. The ratings for T20 went up by over 200 per cent.
Their test ratings have dropped by a half in the last few years. The ratings for T20 went up by over 200 per cent. When Virat Kohli scores a T20 half-century there are 10 times more hits on social media than when he scores a 50 in tests.
By 2025 half of India’s population will be 25 or younger. They are not interested in five-day conversations. So McCullum and Gayle and AB de Villiers and Kevin Pietersen and MS Dhoni haven’t played test cricket for the last couple of years. Five of the biggest draws in the game only bother with biff-and-run.
Nearly 10 years ago an MCC committee acknowledged that test cricket ‘‘is in very real danger of dying ...The committee is deeply concerned that the proliferation of lucrative domestic Twenty20 leagues, such as the IPL, will lead to the premature retirement of quality international cricketers. Those from the lower-ranked test nations could be particularly susceptible to such a career choice, based on earnings alone.’’
Far too late the ICC are starting a badly-formatted test World Championship in 2019 among the world’s top nine teams. But they won’t all play each other and the series will be various lengths. It’s a shambles.
New Zealand Cricket is trying a pink-ball day-night test against England at Eden Park in March.
It will be a success but it will be the twitch of a dying body. Chief executive David White has acknowledged: ‘‘Funding test match cricket is becoming more of a challenge.’’
The Island newspaper recently ran an Ashes-style obituary mourning the death of cricket in Sri Lanka. But all test match scorecards should now be printed with a black border.
Test cricket will one day revert to being a game for gentlemen amateurs. They will be the only people who can afford to play it. Now there’s a retro concept.
Who knows, it may even sell.