ICC considers repackaging Tests : Some suggestions from ICF

[f.b.m]

MAEK PHLATTER PITCHES to get more EXCITEMENT and add some razmatazzZZZZ!!!

[amits]

drop players like dravid & the indian scoring-rates will rise in tests

[fineleg]

drop players like dravid & the indian scoring-rates will rise in tests

please ban amits for asking a legend like Dravid to be dropped from Tests.

[amits]

please ban amits for asking a legend like Dravid to be dropped from Tests.

look at dravids recent test record. a player cant be kept in the test team due to his past records

[mhr123]

lol.. its high time u see a Doc' @ Amit

[SachDan]

Test Match Attendence... I was just going through Gambit's thread about the importance of India's test series against Sri Lanka and was just wondering how many people will be at the ground to watch such a historical tour. It is quite sure our fab four (Sachin,Dravid,Ganguly and Kumble,for a change) won't tour that Island again and what a pity it's going to be seeing all those children with free passes filling up the stadium. There has been a lot of talk all over the cricketing world abt 50 overs dyeing very quickly with over exposure of 20-20.Hope it wont be the same case with test cricket.Its time authorities do some thing to preserve the beauty of test cricket.The truth of the matter is that apart from India,Australia and England,test match attendence for all other countries is very low.Even in the Caribbean its the same case. In the just concluded WI vs Australia test series the crowds were at an all time low. People holding a can of beer and dancing to the tunes seems to be a distant memory.

[flamy]

Nah tests wont die. They'll just use the money from T20s to fund tests. I'm worried abt ODIs though :((. They offer the best of both worlds.

[Dirty_South]

IMO....ODIs shud be reduced to 40 over per side. Test match won't die.

[The Outsider]

Bring Tests into the mass market

Imagine you're a rich Texan billionaire with an entrepreneurial spirit and a truckload of spare cash to invest in a quaint English sport. You've identified a niche of the game that you believe has something going for it, but you've also made it fairly plain that there are two further niches that hold little interest for you. Nevertheless, in the interests of fairness - and because you've encountered one or two dissenters who would have you believe otherwise - you decide to defer judgment until you've seen what it is they've got going for them. What on earth would you think if you were Allen Stanford and you'd just witnessed the farcical scenes at Edgbaston during last night's ODI between England and New Zealand? Forget about attracting a new audience, it's sometimes hard enough knowing how cricket manages to appeal even to its own aficionados. By the time the last spectators had sidled disconsolately away, shortly after 7.30pm, the hardiest of them had been sat in the buttock-numbing cold for nine relentless hours, only for the match to be aborted just as it threatened to get interesting. If that synopsis sounds strangely familiar, it's because last night, I think I got a taste of what it must be like to be an American watching Test cricket. Nothing happened for hours on end, there was a flurry of interest and a few incomprehensible regulations were called into play, and then everyone shook hands and left the field with the job half-done. To add to the absurdity, there was even a half-hour break for "tea" during the brightest playing conditions of the day. For years, all of the above has been written off as part of cricket's "charm" - the sort of confusing scenarios that could be used, in conjunction with witty explanatory tea-towels, to baffle Americans and preserve the game's exclusive appeal. But unfortunately for anyone who still thinks that way, it is an American who has just bought the pavilion, and he's not going to be impressed with such flagrant pointlessness. If Stanford wished to dismiss yesterday's game as "boring", as he did so bluntly with Test cricket during his Lord's launch party last week, there wouldn't be a soul in the sport who could dare suggest he was mistaken. Of course, Test cricket isn't boring, far from it. But is anyone, from Stanford right down to your 11-year-old kid in the park, actually going to hang around to learn about its intricacies when the image it portrays is so stultifying and misleading? Much as it pains me to admit it, Test cricket needs to adapt, and quickly, or else it too will become as anachronistic as yesterday's unloved ODI. In recent days there have been murmurings on that front from another sporting anachronism, the ICC, which descended into civil war with the sacking of Malcolm Speed at the end of April and has barely been able to string together a press release in the two turbulent months that have since elapsed. And yet, on June 29, their annual conference gets underway in Dubai, and according to the former president of the BCCI, IS Bindra, the "repackaging" of Test cricket will be high on the agenda. "It does not mean tinkering with the form, but we are looking at bringing in more audience in Test matches," said Bindra. These were encouraging sentiments because Test cricket does not require a root-and-branch restructuring for its timeless merits to sparkle once again. The means by which Bindra hoped to achieve this aim, however, were rather wider of the mark. "The ICC was looking at ways to increase scoring-rates," he said, "and have a world championship of Test cricket." There are three fundamental requirements for unmissable Test cricket: big crowds, sporting pitches and evenly matched teams. The former drives the adrenaline of the participants, the latter two sustain the battle-lust. And yet, for the vast majority of Tests - certainly for those not involving England, Australia or India - the crowds stay away in their droves, and not even the promise of a Kevin Pietersen switch-hitting masterclass could persuade them otherwise Scoring-rates in particular are a red herring. There are three fundamental requirements for unmissable Test cricket: big crowds, sporting pitches and evenly matched teams. The former drives the adrenaline of the participants, the latter two sustain the battle-lust. And yet, for the vast majority of Tests - certainly for those not involving England, Australia or India - the crowds stay away in their droves, and not even the promise of a Kevin Pietersen switch-hitting masterclass could persuade them otherwise. Stanford, after all, has been a citizen of Antigua for the past decade, and in that time he has witnessed, at the now-defunct ARG, the making and breaking of more Test batting records than you can fit on an honours board. The gratuity of the run-scoring is probably why he finds it so dull. It would be simplistic, however, to call for an end to the flat and featureless batting tracks that have taken over the world game. No board in its right mind would actively prepare a wicket to hasten the end of a match, and even fewer have the money or inclination to dig up their tired old squares and relay with a fresh loam mix. A better bet, and one that would deal with the accessibility issue as well, would be to bite the bullet of tradition and accept that the time is right to introduce the floodlit Test. Admittedly, it would be a wrench to go down such a route, but is the old game really in a position to argue right now? Even the MCC, the spiritual guardian of Test cricket, has been experimenting with a pink ball this season, which is an open acknowledgment that change has to be embraced. Coloured clothing has been around for years, so the shock factor has long since dissipated. Doubtless we'd shed a tear if the 2010-11 Ashes had to be played out in blue versus yellow kits, but we'd get over it if the cricket was up to scratch. And it is on that point - the standard of the cricket - that floodlit Tests might just have the capacity to change the opinion of the Stanfords of this world. Even though day/night one-day cricket has been a global hit for more than 30 years, the inequality of the conditions has been a cause for concern on more than a few occasions. In South Africa especially, chasing under lights is a hazardous business, and at the 2003 World Cup a whole raft of fixtures were effectively decided at the toss. There'd be no such concerns in a day/night Test match, however. A side winning the toss would be obliged to start their innings under the mid-afternoon sun, readjust their eyes as twilight kicks in and the floodlights begin to blink into life, then cope with the dewy, swinging conditions of the evening session - which, if they survived that far, would culminate in a ten-over burst against the new ball (or longer, if four 100-over days were introduced). Ricky Ponting recently hinted that run-scoring was getting a bit easy in this day and age, but that sort of ordeal would test every facet of a batsman's skill. And the very best would get to do it all again the following day. The best captains would get the hang of a timely declaration as well. There is nothing new in the concept of floodlit Tests - Kerry Packer tried them out with limited success during his World Series Cricket revolution - but they would bring a whole new dimension to a game that, in some parts of the world, seems staid beyond salvation. Test cricket thrives in England (and survives in Australia) because there are enough fans with enough leisure time and disposable income to justify spending an entire day, dawn to dusk, at a sporting occasion. In the rest of the world, however, attendances are flat-lining because no one in their right minds can be bothered to pay to sit in a sweltering concrete bowl during the hottest parts of the day. The cool of the tropical evening, on the other hand, is tailormade for such an experience. The day/night format has shown that even a mediocre game of cricket can be a crowd-pulling spectacle, and a prime-time ratings hit for the TV channels as well, and in this money-obsessed age it no longer makes sense to keep Test cricket - the greatest form of the game - cordoned off from the mass market. And the mass market is the only thing that can save the five-day game. After England's series win over New Zealand at Trent Bridge, the ECB announced a fancy-sounding £2 million prize pool as an incentive for further Test success, but as Mike Atherton pointed out in the Times last week, that works out, between 12 players over 75 days, at a shade over £2000 per day. In this era of Twenty20 millions, that's hardly worth getting out of bed for. On November 1, many of those same England players stand to earn £500,000 for three hours' work. If fans around the world aren't drawn back to Test cricket, there will be no game worth saving. The time for purity has long since passed. Andrew Miller is UK editor of Cricinfo © Cricinfo

http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/355303.html

[The Outsider]

Just read this article and apologies if it has been posted before - haven't been able to spend much time on the forum lately. But after reading it I found the whole idea so completely ridiculous. The writer ignores the problems of test cricket being caused by poor pitches, specially in the subcontinent and harps on about the use of floodlights and colored clothing. Now, I don't have anything against innovation and moving on with the times but just the very notion of a test match being played as a day-night affair is stupid. Test cricket is the only form of cricket which still offers spinners a fair chance. 4th and 5th day turners with batsman trying to grind out for survival are an integral part of the charm. Playing tests under the lights will completely murder spin bowling, as if T20 and ODIs have not done so already. And before any one jumps on me about the success of spinners in T20 and ODIs, it's either the all time greats like Warne, Murali, and Kumble who have been successful or slow bowlers(not spinners). Guys like Shahid Afridi are not spinners. Imagine the last couple of sessions on a 5th day Wankhede pitch with the batting side struggling to survive against Kumble and Harbhajan. All of a sudden floodlights are turned on, dew starts to gather on the pitch and outfield, spinners become ineffective, and the batting side goes on to draw. Or imagine each evening becoming a battle for survival in Durban rather than something dependent on the pitch conditions. Mediocre players like the Mullalies and Pathans will murder opposition with guarantee. Many other such scenarios can be thought of to completely knock off this half crazy, half ridiculous notion of playing tests under floodlights.

[Dhondy]

Shwetabh, he has a point about the anachronism that after 5 days of play, a sport can end in a draw. Tradition or not, this is untenable. I am all for floodlit cricket, if it helps get results, bugger the spinners- who cares for those silly little contortionists anyway? I would go one step further and stipulate that every Test centre must be an all weather venue with facilities for retractable roofs. Bring in 3rd umpire adjudications so that batsmen can't escape plumb LBWs, eliminate heavy rollers, remove ceilings on bouncers, and allow more than two fielders behind the batting crease on the leg side. Penalise sides for scoring under 2.5 runs per over over the course of an innings. Allow bowlers to be substituted in the event of injury by other bowlers, who are then allowed a bowl. Weight wins more heavily over draws in terms of points scored, and eliminate bonus points for series victories so that sides don't hang on to 1-0 margins like Dravid and Kumble did against England & Pakistan. This won't destroy Test cricket. To evolve does not mean to lose one's character. A sporting encounter must end decisively, and tradition, nor inertia, must be allowed to come in the way.

[punjabi_khota]

Let the game spread through T-20 cricket. And preserve the test cricket for the elite few countries. Make tickets for test matches almost free. Earnings from T-20 can easily make up for the losses. Hell, give tickets of test matches free with T-20 ones. There is no hope to spread test cricket to any countries anyways. In the last 20 years, we lost zimbabwe and gained BD. Which has won 1 test in 50 or so.

[Ram]

Whether we like it or not, Test cricket, in its current form, is destined for the graveyard. Apart from the fact that the quality of competition has gone down dramatically and the nature of the pitches have also produced dreary contests, the biggest threat to test cricket now comes from its step-brother, T20. Any global sport is driven by TV Ads revenue and the Ads are decided by the viewership. With the advent of T20 and the astronomical TRP ratings that it has produced ( atleast in Ind), its not impossible to think that at point or the other, Corporates will run out of money to sponsor Test cricket. Their coffers to be spent on Advertising of sporting events is only so much, and now, most of that budget is taken up by T20. As more and more T20 competitions take place, the money invested on Test cricket advertising will drop considerably. And the more this happens, the less viable TV sport channels will find it to spend mega-millions to buy broadcast rights of test cricket from the boards and ICC. If BCCI sells the rights for the 45-day IPL next season for $700M-$800M, then, the test cricket rights for the next FIVE years may not even fetch half that price. Contrary to common perception, sport is driven by corporates, not by the common man's preferences. How else can anyone explain the fact that in a country like India where almost every other sport is neglected totally, cricket alone manages to dominate the news everyday? Its because the corporate and the media DECIDED to make it that way. If tomorrow, the corporates decide that they are not going to invest money into Test cricket, its will be long gone too, irrespective of what you, me or any cricket fan thinks and feels about it. We can whine as much as we want, but at the end of the day, our voices will be rendered mute.

[Tapioca]

Not having read all the posts .... I was probably ten years old when I first learned that "Test cricket was dying". My great-grandfather was probably of the same age when he heard it first. US of A is richest and most powerful country in the world. But they too feel the need to shout "we are being attacked" every few minutes. Wonder why it is the same with cricket.

[Yuvraj4Captaincy]

Test cricket needs some innovation and I agree with the writer.

[Feed]

BCCI keen on ICC’s Test Championship Sharad Pawar said Test cricket was their first preference and they were willing to discuss the idea with the ICC. More... BCCI keen on ICC’s Test Championship Agencies Posted online: Friday , June 20, 2008 at 1209 hrs IST New Delhi, June 20: : The International Cricket Council has received a shot in its arm with regard to the hosting a Test Championship with the Indian Cricket Board showing keen interest in the concept. BCCI President Sharad Pawar said Test cricket was their first preference and they were willing to discuss the idea with the game's governing body. "The BCCI is definitely working for the future of Test cricket. We are clear and confident that Test cricket has a future. We have digested one-day cricket, we have digested Twenty20, but the first preference is always Test cricket. We will discuss the Test championship proposal," Pawar told a cricket website. With the huge success of Indian Premier League, many cricketers had expressed fears that T20 would soon eclipse other forms of cricket including Test cricket. ICC acting CEO, Dave Richardson had revealed that they were considering creation of a Test Championship to ensure that a place remains for Test cricket in the cricket calendar. "The ICC will consider a number of options in the upcoming board meetings (in Dubai later this month), one of which is an option to introduce a Test championship or league," Richardson had said at the Champions Trophy launch ceremony in Pakistan. According to Richardson the move was intended to preserve Test cricket as the pinnacle of the game. "There are so many ways this could be done, a league over one year, two years or four years. I am certainly in favour of looking at such an option to make sure we provide a good quality context for Test cricket to take place so that it can be preserved as the pinnacle of the game."

[The Outsider]

I am all for floodlit cricket, if it helps get results, bugger the spinners- who cares for those silly little contortionists anyway? I would go one step further and stipulate that every Test centre must be an all weather venue with facilities for retractable roofs.

Dhondy, I care about spinners. Warne, Murali, and Kumble are responsible for batsmen not running away with averages in the 60s and 70s instead of the 50s. I know your dislike for spin but there are a few supporters of the art in the context of the last couple of days of a test. Taking spin out of the equation is like playing chess without rooks - pieces who enter the game a bit late but when they do can really dominate the situation and I can't imagine playing chess without rooks. Sure, most people beat me with just the bishops and knights but when I have that occasional fluke game where rooks become part of the game, it's just tremendous.

This won't destroy Test cricket. To evolve does not mean to lose one's character. A sporting encounter must end decisively, and tradition, nor inertia, must be allowed to come in the way.

Test cricket is the closest sport has come to reflect life as I see it - there need not be losers or winners, just the journey becomes something to cherish about. If the pitch has something in it and the match still ends up being a draw I have no complaints. There is no need for every encounter you go through in life to have a loser and a winner, why should sport? And with due apologies I found most of your suggestions mentioned to "improve" test cricket utter rubbish.

[Chandan]

I agree with Shwetabh. I like test cricket the way it is. It is just that I'd like to have more sporting pitches in every country. I would not like to have pitches like they had at Headingley against WI few years back and the match had finished in two days with 22 wickets falling in one day!!! A pitch which would provide an even contest between bat and ball will ensure superb test match more often than not. I'd like the boundaries to be a bit bigger in India, Pak, SL, BD, NZ and even WI and SA. Also making two tiers for test teams is not a bad idea. This way we'll have matches only between teams which are even in strength. We can have relegation and promotion after every two years. This will also reduce the workload of the players and lots of meaningless matches won't be played anymore. 1st tier: teams ranked from 1-6 2nd tier: teams ranked from 7-10 What do you say?

[Predator_05]

Playing test cricket in stadiums with retractable roofs would take something away from the game. Test cricket is influenced by the elements, the weather playing a pivotal role in how the match progresses, how the pitch turns out and behaves during the course of a match, etc. If the conditions are continually uniform (which they will be if you play 90 overs on the same pitch for 5 days) then the game will lose a fair bit of it's charm and unpredictability. That's one element test cricket needs in order sustain the public's interest. In that scenario, test cricket won't be such a stern examination of a cricketer's skill. We won't see any more incredible knocks on worn out 5th day pitches, for instance.

[Dhondy]

Some further suggestions. Make the new ball available at 60 overs. Penalise the bowling side in currency of runs for overs bowled short. Take away the rule that batsmen can't be out LBW if the ball hits them outside the off if they are playing a shot. And Shwetabh, life is a nice simile, but doesn't address the issue- how do you popularise Test cricket with youngsters who are growing up, or people who don't follow cricket at all? If they wanted to watch life meander on at a leisurely pace, they'd go sit by a stream and watch frogs jump in and out.