A great victory – but not much of a test

Hi folks. It’s time for a change of pace today. We have an interesting article by guest writer Peter Bradley, who has some interesting thoughts on the brevity of England’s last two test matches. Are we the only ones pining for five days of hard fought action with a nail biting finish? Is T20 creating a trend? Over to you Peter …

I’m as delighted as any (English) cricket-lover that England has regained the Ashes – and the manner of the victory at Trent Bridge was certainly thrilling.

But as the rest of Saturday and then Sunday and Monday passed by without the reassuring accompaniment of Test Match Special, without the ebb and flow and the calculations and uncertainties of a keenly-fought contest, was I the only one to feel a little bereft – and yes, a little short-changed?

For all its drama, has this been as compelling a series as the 2005 Ashes when every game was played out over four or five nerve-jangling days? I don’t think so. This summer’s Edgbaston and Trent Bridge routs will certainly be remembered – but not as long as the Tests England edged by two runs and three wickets a decade ago as half the nation cowered behind their sofas.

Test matches are supposed to last five days, or at least four. In a really close contest, every session, like a piece of music, has its own internal harmonies and discords, its crises and possibilities. In a really good game, fortunes fluctuate and a stroke of luck or a flash of brilliance can see the advantage pass back and forth between the sides in a moment, over the course of an hour or in the compass of the day.

Yet the Trent Bridge Test was all but decided in the first 30 minutes and, like the Edgbaston Test a week earlier, it was done and dusted well before the third day was out. It seems no longer sensible to buy a ticket for the fourth day, never mind the fifth. Certainly, crash-bang three day Test cricket will be exciting and, barring the intervention of the weather, there will be a result. But what about the cricket that isn’t played? Much as I enjoyed my visit to Edgbaston on the action-packed second day, I’m conscious that the early finish deprived up to 50,000 spectators of their own day at the cricket.

Fast finishes also deprive us of the genuine Test form. I enjoy one day cricket and Twenty20 is better than no cricket at all. But the five day format is the supreme test of the players’ skill and temperament and, for the spectator, the nuances and subtleties in its quieter passages can be as absorbing and as compelling as those in which the runs are flowing or the wickets tumbling.

There’s no doubt that the shorter forms have brought new fans as well as new investment to cricket. Spectators – and above all broadcasters and sponsors – want spectacle. They want to see lots of runs, lots of wickets and, come what may, results.

Nor is there any doubt that skills learned in Twenty20 have been applied to good effect in Test cricket, particularly by batsmen. Not so long ago a steady agglomeration of 240 runs would have been considered a good total for the day. Now, 400 is not unusual. On fast-scoring wickets, that’s fine. But as we’ve seen in the last two Tests, the Australian batsmen, brought up on the short form and Twenty20 World Cup winners earlier this year, don’t know how to accumulate their runs and protect their wickets when the conditions demand patience and perseverance rather than panache and pizzazz. It would be a great shame and a great loss to cricket if these skills were to disappear from the game.

It would be tragic too if the honourable draw were to be written out of the Test match equation. Of course matches which peter out without incident can be tedious non-events. But a draw – such as the cliff-hanger at Cardiff in 2009 when against the odds Anderson and Panesar hung on to deny Australia – can be every bit as dramatic and climactic as victory or defeat.

Exciting though they can be, three days Tests must not be allowed to become the norm. I wouldn’t want to go to the concert hall and find that the orchestra had omitted the slow movement of a Beethoven symphony simply because it’s too down-beat or demanding to play. Similarly, I don’t want my Test matches routinely over in three days. Apologies for the repeated musical analogies but I think they’re apt: at their best, Test matches are symphonic in form with their adagios and allegros, their pianos and fortissimos. And they demand the concentration and the discernment of the audience if they are to reveal their most profound and rewarding mysteries.

What’s to be done? Much depends of course on how lovers and administrators of the game embrace and when necessary resist the commercial interests that are shaping the modern game.

But part at least depends on the preparation of wickets. Each of the four Ashes Tests played so far has been one-sided. Lords suited the Australians and they duly won. Edgbaston and Trent Bridge were prepared to England’s advantage and they made the most of it. The statistics suggest that in recent years the outcome of matches and series has been increasingly determined by home advantage. Of course that advantage evens out over time but that’s not the point: I want to see cricket which provides for as even a contest as the respective talents of the two sides allow. If Australia beat England 5-0 in Australia and England beat Australia 3-1 in England every time, we may infer that the Australians are slightly stronger than we are. But we may also just as well send each other the Ashes in the post.

I’m sure that there are better solutions. But, just to get the debate going, why not allow each side in a five Test series to instruct the groundsman for two of the first four matches, the order to be decided by the drawing of lots? While we’re at it, why not take the vagaries of the toss out of the equation by allowing the other side to decide whether to bat or bowl? The preparation of the remaining wicket could be decided by ballot. At least this way, all round skill will have a greater bearing on results and that’s how it should be.

Perhaps I’m just a bit behind the times. And perhaps the recent trend of foreshortened Tests will be short-lived. But even if the big money and the big crowds are going to the limited overs game, the Test format and the well-honed skills and the quiet intensity which make it so special – and so unique among sports – must surely be protected and preserved.

Peter Bradley

12 August 2015

24 comments

  • Just a quick note on length.
    In 2005 lords lasted 3 days (finished after tea on 4th due to rain)
    Edgbaston 3 days (finished just before lunch on day 4 due to rain)
    We lost a day at OT.
    Trent Bridge 4th afternoon.
    We lost almost a whole day at the oval.

    • After 4 tests in 05 we had 1215 over’s, in 15 its 1068. So 147 more over’s at the same stage. Almost the difference between the Trent bridge tests.

  • Excellent post though Peter. Really it’s down to batsmen to knuckle down and back themselves in tough conditions.
    We can have 5 day tests on good wickets. The match at Lord’s vs NZ earlier this summer shows this.

  • 4 tests is a statistically insignificant sample, no? We were complaining for years about how chief executive pitches were turning every game into a bore draw and killing test cricket.

    Well if you make the pitches a bit more interesting in order to reduce the probability of boring everyone to death, you’re going to have the occasional 3 day test.

    The answer is not to have less result pitches, the answer is to have more of them! That way batsmen will be forced to actually learn to play on them and take the game into the 4th or 5th day.

    IMO an ideal test match has 1200 runs and 39 wickets, starts on a Thursday and finishes on the Sunday evening. The 5th day is there to make sure that a few hours of rain doesn’t automatically mean a draw.

  • I was hoping that a few tests here is just a blip but then I remembered the last two tests v India last Summer. Both three days and the 4th test would have been only two days as only 36 overs were bowled on the 2nd day.

  • Added to that we pretty much knew the result both times as India were skittled for a low score.

  • I agree with Neil that it’s down to the players to learn how to play in different conditions, that’s the way you can truly become a great player.

    I assume that the idea of instructing the groundsman would enable the away team to ask for a pitch more like their usual conditions at home. Although I know little about the way pitches are prepared, I would have thought it might be difficult for an Australian groundsman, given their climate, to prepare an English style pitch and vice versa. And exactly the same for the sub-continent.

    Re the toss, I have sometimes wondered if it might not be a good idea for the first match to have a toss and then the following ones to alternate between the two teams. But then you look at England winning in India a few years back and I think we lost most of those tosses didn’t we and still managed to come out on the winning side. It doesn’t always have a major significance.

  • Historically Trent Bridge was not a ‘result wicket’ and nearly half the Tests played there in the 1990s ended in draws

    The trend in modern Test Cricket is for far fewer drawn games in part one suspects due to the influence of modern one day cricket where Test size scores are now being accumulated by batsmen in as little as 50 overs. The trend to hit out or get out means games are struggling to make day 5 as even when sides don’t collapse the sheer pace of play has accelerated the process of getting a result.

      • That is the point I am making.

        The recent trend in Test matches is for games to end in results.

        It is not merely a reflection of difference s in pitches or players ability. The modern game has simply got faster especially with regard to the pace at which batsmen score runs.

  • I”ve often pondered the idea of taking the toss out of the equation, the 2 ideas most often suggested are as Maggie said, 1 toss at the start. Or maybe even more radical, let the away team choose what they want to do in every test.

  • I just want to establish that the common perceptions that Home teams are winning more Tests and there are fewer draws are both true.

    Here are results by Home teams in recent decades:
    1970s W35% D42% L23%
    1990s W41% D36% L23%
    2010s W48% D26% L27%
    (If Bangladesh are factored out and Pakistan’s matches in UAE regarded as Home matches then the 2010s figure becomes 52% for Home wins).

    The Big Three are the main culprits with the three best W/L ratios in home Tests (India actually have the highest). It might all be a coincidence – but if one wanted to argue that the Big Three have hit upon a business model of near-guaranteed Home wins with happy Home broadcasters and fans then one could find some evidence to support it. I certainly wouldn’t have much confidence that they are likely to do anything much about it in a hurry.

    • After/during the last Aus/India series in Australia, there was a strong suspicion amongst Australians that the pitches had been neutered to avoid India being humiliated.

      Whether that’s because India has the power to influence Australia and asked for more docile pitches, or the Australian board knows games against India are what keeps them financially viable and so deliberately boosted the opposition’s chances, is anyone’s guess.

      • Not only did the pitches seem flat, they also had a sameness from ground to ground which is most unusual in Australia. I wondered if it was due to the use of drop in pitches.

        • Adelaide’s been a bit of a dead dog for years, and the drop-in at the MCG can be a little on the ordinary side, but the Gabba is never as slow and docile as seen in that series, and the SCG can often have quite an English greentop feel to it, yet they comfortably batted themselves to a draw. Notably, they completely avoided the WACA.

    • I have checked out the stats and it is noticeable that a significant proportion of the fastest centuries and double centuries in Test Cricket have been scored since the year 2000

      http://www.itsonlycricket.com/entry/1500/

      The trend for batsmen to score at an accelerated rate this making a result inside 5 days likely is not just my imagination.

  • Why the need to mess about with the toss? At Edgbaston Australia chose to bat and made a mess of it. It is up to to teams to make the most of the toss when they win it and to overcome it if they lose it.

  • While I agree the rapid capitulation of the losing sides throughout the current series is disappointing, I don’t believe the pitches had all that much to do with it.
    The middle order batting has ranged from fairly poor to desperately poor. Had Root not been playing, the series would likely still be poised on a knife edge.

    • Great point Nigel. A look at the Ashes batting averages shows that Root has been our only success. This is disappointing because Australia haven’t even bowled well.

  • Test cricket will never go back to what it was. The Money from ipl has seen to that. Years gone by every Australian batsmen had experienced English conditions through county cricket. I remember Englishman playing in the shield also. The cream of Australia’s batting talent now goes to India instead. Smashing the ball around on roads in t 20 doesn’t prepare you for ashes cricket in English conditions. Sadly I feel this current trend of home heroes will continue because of the ipl money. The ashes is the only series keeping test cricket relevant which is tragic for the game

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