Plan for four-day Tests would be retrograde step

The editor of Cricket Statistician analyses recent events

How long is a game of cricket? Meaning, in this case, a two innings-a-side game, which until the Sixties was theoretically the only form known to the laws.

In the 18th-century, given the state of pitches, one day was very often enough for four innings. Twoday games still exist, though they cannot have first-class status, and they are no longer the norm for Minor County or 2nd XI county cricket.

In England and Wales, first-class county cricket evolved as a threeday game, though it has now become four, something which has brought it into line with most of the world.

It was necessary as covered pitches came in, and given the kind of pitches we have seen this season, is beginning to look a bit short given that more than half of this season’s County Championship games have been drawn.

Certainly a drawn Test match is now usually regarded as a disappointment in most quarters, though the great escapes become legendary, as with the West Indies in Kingston last week, where batting from 48-4 to 388-6 may have been important in restoring some pride to a team seeming to be in need of intensive care.

But now we have a suggestion that we should have four-day Tests. But the first and most negative thing about modern Test cricket is the over rate.

Already dismally slow, it continues to get slower and slower, which is one reason why the notion of fourday Tests is a non-starter. About 340 overs is not enough.

In 1949, the New Zealand tour of England, when all four Tests were drawn, put an end to three-day Test cricket. In those Tests the bowlers produced 363, 365, 366 and 326 overs respectively.

Four days is the new three days. Yes, the run rate is up and, yes, strike rates are slightly improved, but four days would allow weaker teams to play for a draw from the start as New Zealand successfully did in 1949.

There were no more three-day Tests, establishing the convention that a Test match should be of five days duration (or in some cases in Australia and the West Indies, six days of five hours each).

At the other end of the scale we have the era of “timeless” Tests, originally in Australia but also adopted in South Africa and the West Indies.

However, an eight or nine-day match, with no motivation for taking risks or playing strokes, can become quite stultifying and also play havoc with the tour schedule, leading on two occasions to the match ending when the visiting team had to leave to catch the boat home.

In 1953, in the early days of an era of dreary risk-free cricket, four low scoring five-day Tests between England and Australia were drawn with scarcely a shot played.

At Headingley, England scored 142-7 on the first day, and on the fourth advanced from 62-1 to 177-5 (England’s average scoring rate in that match was just under 1.6 an over).

An extra day was allotted for the fifth at the Oval. Just to make doubly sure, the wicket produced was paradise for Laker and Lock, and England won without needing the extra day.

Which perhaps goes to show that there is no perfect answer, but four-day Tests would surely be a retrograde step.