Why four-day Tests, not nostalgia, are the key to attracting new fans
Tim Wigmore joins the debate on reducing the length of Test matches and backs the cutback
In these pages last week, the esteemed Peter Hayter celebrated the five-day Test. From Headingley 1981 to Kolkata 2001, Cardiff 2009 and last year’s wonderful finale against New Zealand at Lord’s, the fifth day has given cricket some of its most cherished and celebrated moments.
Yet the notion of scrapping the fifth day has significant global support, including from the boards in England, New Zealand, South Africa and Sri Lanka. Proposals will be discussed at an ICC meeting in September. Four-day Test matches could be the norm from as soon as 2019.
Administrators flirting with this notion are not trying to ruin Test cricket. They are trying to ensure that Test cricket can shake off the paralysing worries about its health and embrace a vibrant future, free of existential crises that it is out of sync with the modern world.
Predictably enough, the case for four-day Tests begins with money. Broadcasters are known to favour a move to four-day Tests. In place of the current hotchpotch of start dates – beginning on Thursdays in England was once considered sacrosanct, but now Wednesday and Friday starts are routine and, in 2014, one Test even started on a Sunday – Test cricket’s schedule could be rationalised.
All Tests would begin on Thursdays, progressing to a denouement on Sunday evenings, just like golf tournaments. “The likelihood of the game coming to its climax and finishing over a weekend would improve TV ratings and ticket sales,” said Andrew Wildblood, a former vice-president for International Management Group (IMG) and one of the most knowledgable men on cricket broadcasting in the entire world, recently.
Cutting Tests by a day would also “save a hell of a lot of money from the ground’s point of view,” as ECB chairman Colin Graves said last year. Financial considerations seem cold and heartless. And yet if Test cricket becomes more lucrative, it will help safeguard the quality of cricket, as all traditionalists want – and could help to manage the threat posed by domestic T20 leagues to the longest format.
A combination of Thursday-Sunday Tests ensuring that TV rights would be worth more, and the lack of a fifth day reducing costs, would mean that boards could afford to play their players more. That means that, for players from New Zealand, Sri Lanka, the West Indies and beyond, the gap between what they could earn playing Test cricket and what they could earn playing domestic cricket would be reduced.
For all those who believe that Test cricket should be played by more than three nations, this should matter a lot. In a new player survey by the Federation of International Cricketers’ Association (FICA), 58.6 per cent of players from Bangladesh, New Zealand, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies said that they would consider rejecting a national contract if the were paid significantly more to be a free agent, playing only in domestic T20 leagues.
Former New Zealand captain Ross Taylor said:“The earnings opportunities that domestic T20 events provide will make it harder to commit to playing international cricket, and we are now faced with a choice as to where we play.”
FICA find that a leading New Zealand cricketer could earn $230,000 a year playing in all three formats of the game for his country, but could earn $500,000 for playing in three domestic T20 leagues. For as long as that discrepancy exists, then economic rationale will draw players to premature international retirement when scheduling clashes arise.
This will demean and devalue Test cricket far more than four-day Tests. If
“Earnings opportunities that domestic T20 events provide will make it harder to commit to international cricket ” – Ross Taylor
four-day Tests, sensibly implemented, result in fewer premature retirements, and a high quality of Test cricket globally, that does not look like such a bad trade-off. Is Test cricket better served better by having teams playing five-day matches with an understrength team or being at full-strength in four-day matches?
Four-day Tests would also help to combat one of the other great blights on the modern Test game: two-match series. If Tests were reduced to four days, then a three-match series could take place in only 18 days, with each match commencing in consecutive Thursdays, rather than a minimum of 24 days – normally more like 30 – today. New Zealand have said this would make it easier for them to play three-Test series.
Most importantly, four-day Tests would make it easier for as many people as possible to watch. It is perverse that the climax of Test cricket is so often played out in midweek. No other sporting event allows its denouement to be played out during working hours.
Ensuring that the final day always takes place on Sundays will allow as many people as possible to watch the thrilling final stages of matches, and leave Test cricket best-placed not just to retain its existing fans but to win new ones.
And this, ultimately, is the point. Test matches are in competition not only with domestic T20 cricket, but with other sports and a time-poor age. Test matches need to make themselves relevant and accessible for a new generation of fans. If four-day matches are best placed to do that, they should not be rejected out of hand. Sometimes cherished traditions can only be preserved through prudent and well-managed reform.
Of course four-day Tests would change the game. Most obviously, days would need to be extended, to four of 100 overs each. This would mean that over rates, the one blight on the thrilling England-Pakistan series, would need to be addressed once and for all; the simplest way is to ruthlessly impose penalty runs – say eight runs per over not bowled on time – on teams that slack.
To take into account the longer days, ticket policy could also be modernised: an overdue reform, in any case. If days were placed in two big sessions, of 50 overs each, with a break in the middle, fans could buy tickets for either the morning or afternoon session, just as those at tennis events can buy tickets for a portion of the day.
The cricket, would change a little, too. The pace of the game would be a little faster, declarations would become more enterprising and all-rounders would rise in prominence, given how bowling 100 overs a day would stretch the fielding side.
Yet the nature of these changes should not be overstated. Go to a day of County Championship cricket, and you will see a tempo that fundamentally mirrors the five-day Test. In any case, the majority of Test matches this decade already finish within 400 overs. Four-day matches would still leave plenty of scope for enchanting Tests. Consider Pakistan’s victory in the Lord’s Test. The match was a classic, its narrative evolving over four days until reaching a climax on a glorious Sunday afternoon, when spin won the game.
The match did not suffer at all for finishing within four days.
And do four-day Tests really represent the violation of something inviolable? To an English cricket fan of the Thirties, the notion of ending the summer’s Test series with a five-day match would seem egregious; back then, ending series with timeless Tests was the norm.
Test cricket’s sustaining myth is the notion that it is impervious to change.
Yet Tests have been played over three, four, five or six days, and even been timeless; the five-day Test has actually only been the norm since 1979. Matches have been played with overs of four, six or eight balls. The number of teams allowed to play has risen from two to ten. The DRS, the introduction of day/night Tests, the rise in helmet technology and the end of uncovered wickets have also all fundamentally changed the game.
In this context, four-day Tests look less revolutionary than a modest tweak to an ever-evolving game; they are a return, indeed, to a method that has been tried before.
The debate about the merits of fourday Tests should not hinge on nostalgia, much less the sanctity of player statistics, but on whether they can help Test cricket captivate new generations.