New Wisden edition is right, ICC must start acting like a charity to save Test game
Perhaps the aspect of the cricket world that has changed most since the publication of the last Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack a year ago is the recognition that Test cricket is not eternal. This is apparent in the notes by the editor, Lawrence Booth. He reflects on the paradox of this sense of mortality arising after one of the most memorable Ashes series last summer, and two remarkable Tests that ended on the same day last January – at Brisbane, between Australia and West Indies, when the visitors beat the home side for the first time in 20 years; and England beating India at Hyderabad by 28 runs after being 190 behind. Yet despite such absorbing cricket, displaying the attraction of the traditional game, Mr Booth focuses on the cancerous effect of money on Test cricket.
Cricket must have money. Cricketers have to make a living. Worse, many have little prospect of serious earning power beyond 35. Cricket ought not to be a deeply over-regulated and restricted business, and the market forces that rule the game have, deservedly, made cricketers far richer than thought possible before Kerry Packer and his circus. But those same forces have driven the world’s most talented cricketers from first-class cricket and into franchise competitions. And, as Mr Booth points out, those franchises have also made the people who operate them, most notably the Indians, very rich indeed. They will not be washed up when they are older.
For them, T20 cricket is licence to print money that will last for decades, and it will grow and prosper at the expense of Test cricket for very simple reasons: principally, that cricketers have limited opportunities to play the game, and would rather play the highly-remunerative pop version rather than the classical; and also, the money people have to spend on attending cricket matches is finite, and the mindless popularity of franchise cricket will probably deplete that resource before people choose to pay for the Test format. And this is especially true in less affluent corners of the world.
Mr Booth refers to a redistribution of funds by the International Cricket Council that he finds ‘all the harder to stomach’. ‘India’s slice of the pie’, he writes, ‘had grown from less than 25 per cent to 38.5 per cent, or close to $230m a year.’ The slices for others ranged from 6.89 per cent for England to 2.8 for Afghanistan. The West Indies, where cricket is dying, despite the heroics in Brisbane, reaped 4.58 per cent, or just $27.5m. Mr Booth says the sums were calculated in a way that ‘entrenched the inequality’, being based on television audiences: something India’s 1.4 billion population contributes much more to than the six million in the West Indies. In cricket, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. What Mr Booth effectively says, and where this logically – and correctly – leads is for the ICC to act not as a lucrative business but as a registered charity.
‘The job of an umpire is reduced to that of a clothes-rack’
Failure to do so will soon lead to some Test playing countries going to the wall, and killing a still substantial potential audience for the longer game. As he remarks, the third-rate side South Africa sent to New Zealand last winter because its best men were playing franchise cricket was painfully indicative of the direction of travel. So too is the rise of the two-match series, caused by the crowding out of serious cricket by the frivolous game. And he writes of other factors undermining Test cricket, notably the constant fall in the over rate, which he says has ‘long been a blight on the game’.
He makes points whose familiarity does not undermine their truth: such as that low rates are a fraud on the public who pay so excessively for Test tickets, and that they highlight an unpleasant cynicism in the game where sides slow down play in order to avoid defeat (this has been going on for decades: I well recall West Indies, threatened by defeat at home during the era of Viv Richards’s revered captaincy, dropping down to eight an hour against England).
He quotes Benedict Bermange, a leading statistician, having calculated that a total of 116 overs of play were lost in the five Ashes Tests last summer because of poor over rates. Mr Booth also suggests that with so many Tests finishing in under four days it would perk things up to make Tests of four days’ duration. That would surely, however, lead to many more draws as over rates plunged further in pursuit of that result. This problem in Test cricket – solvable in England by forcing players to continue until 90 overs are bowled in the day, something not viable in parts of the world where the sun sets far earlier – touches on two related points that Mr Booth also raises: the authority of umpires and the so-called ‘spirit of cricket’.
Now that all top-level cricket has automatic review systems the job of an umpire is reduced to that of a clothes-rack. Within a few years they will be replaced by artificial intelligence, which will call no-balls and wides and make instant decisions on LBWs, catches, stumpings and run-outs, which itself would speed the game up: no endless hanging around while an off-field umpire looks at replays. One hopes Wisden will examine these possibilities next year. Given umpires have surrendered any disciplinary function, that can be concentrated in the hands of a third umpire. And if the ICC is to have any point beyond acting as the stock exchange of modern cricket, it can ensure national boards apply disciplinary sanctions to captains and teams who break the laws and play cynically, such as by manipulating over-rates. If that means sacking captains and banning cheating players, so be it. The Test game is in too poor a state of health to be treated in this way.
Just as Wisden arrived, MCC members were sent details of the stunning new Allen and Tavern stands at Lord’s, for which planning permission has just been granted and which will open in 2027. How much Test cricket, one wonders, and even county cricket, will there be to watch by then?
