Can Test Cricket Survive?

ON A MUGGY afternoon, the weather made more unbearable by the hint of rain that traps the heat in the air, the usually reticent Dilip Vengsarkar breaks into an ebullient tone. “Of course I am looking forward to it. No way I’m going to miss it,” he declares over the phone. “I’m a purist at heart.” The batting mainstay of the late 1970s and 1980s and later selector, is of course referring to the first-ever World Test Championship (WTC) final that will be played between India and New Zealand next week. He believes it will be an evenly contested match but is willing to wager that India will emerge victorious. “New Zealand are a very good team. And they have the advantage of being familiar with the conditions (they are playing their second Test match against England currently), but this Indian team is very good. The kind of bowlers we have now,” he says and does not complete his thought.

He does not need to. India probably possess the best bowling attack for all conditions. In the last few years, they have been as good as any in foreign conditions, sometimes even better, and far superior at home where pitches assist spinners. In Australia earlier this year, even a second string attack outperformed the hosts. New Zealand, on the other hand, are the Cinderella of the cricketing world, at the stage where their glass slipper is yet to be retrieved by a prince. They are a side with some limitations, but under the command of the affable Kane Williamson have the capacity to punch above their weight, coming so close to winning the 2019 World Cup, for instance.

It is understandable why—despite the suspicious lack of hype around this final—this will make for a riveting match. A nearly three-year-long competition among the major Test playing countries culminating in a five-day final that will feature some of the best fast bowlers and the two best batsmen and captains of their era to decide which is the best Test team in the world should make for a mouthwatering contest. And it is.

But it comes at a time when the five-day version couldn’t have been under more strain. The global health of Test matches has always been far from assured. And the pandemic is now making things worse.

The journeys of the two teams to the final highlight some of the problems inherent in this format today. India is a cricket behemoth through whose board offices more than half of the game’s finances flows. Staging a four or five-match-long Test series isn’t an issue of finance. (Although finding the time between other formats is.) New Zealand cricket in comparison brings in a fraction of the broadcasting and sponsorship revenue. They have played only 11 matches to qualify for the final (about half of all the matches England have played, for instance), their series mostly comprising of two matches.

Test matches today face a real danger of becoming an elite three-team affair. India, Australia and England (who account for 90 per cent of cricket’s global media rights, according to reports) play most of the matches. Simply because they can afford to. There have been 293 matches out of 478 involving one of these three since the start of 2010. That is about 61.3 per cent of all matches. Some of the new entrants to the format like Ireland and Afghanistan have hardly played any match.

“That is a big issue,” says Anshuman Gaekwad, the former India opener and coach and current member of the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s (BCCI) Apex Panel. “For Test cricket to survive, not just a few but all countries should be able to prioritise the format equally.”

This decline throws light on a much larger malaise. A lot of Test cricket is increasingly boring. Without an overarching contest to bind them together until recently, it has also been under the threat of irrelevance (although it is arguable how interesting the WTC has made the five-day affair). Most teams travel to and fro playing matches that seem to have little context, and subsequently register little attention. The results of most matches can be predicted before a ball is bowled. The exciting series India played against Australia was an aberration; the predictable 3-1 walloping India delivered to England earlier this year more the norm.

In the past, Test cricket matches frequently ended in draws. A statistic on cricket website Cricinfo finds that 43.1 per cent of all matches played between 1969 and 1985 ended in draws. This improved only marginally between 1986 and 1999 when 38.9 matches ended in draws. Something had to be done since a lot of these matches were ending in draws because teams were playing defensively.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) responded by introducing changes that extended the total number of overs played, including minimum-over (per day) rules, making up for time lost due to rain or bad light, and allowing the use of light towers. This, along with the influence of attacking tactics from the growing number of One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and T20s, has radically altered the possibilities of draw. Between 2000 and 2009, only 24.6 per cent matches ended in draws, and in 2010-20 this further declined to 19.2 per cent.

A 2009 paper, however, argues that the lower frequency of draws is indicative of something harmful to the game’s interests. The matches are becoming more one-sided and dull. The author of the paper, Liam JA Lenten, a lecturer at the La Trobe University in Australia who focuses on sport economics in his research, points out that while fewer games are ending in draws, matches are increasingly getting completed in four or fewer days, suggesting just how one-sided and predictable the modern Test has become. “[T]he frequency of Tests finishing within four days rises over the 1981–2007 sample from 19 percent to 40.8 percent, while the analogous figure for Tests finishing within three days is even much more dramatic, rising from 2.5 percent to 15.3 percent…It is not being suggested that the ideal Test cricket match is one in which a draw is the result, but most Tests that finish with a result in the final session of the fifth day are highly absorbing Test matches, and under the current status quo, there are not enough Tests going into the fifth day,” he writes.

Matches have become only more predictable in the time since the paper was published. Since 2020, 23 of 45 matches have ended in four days or less. This includes five matches that got over in three days, and two that are among the shortest in history, lasting only two days (both of which occurred this year). An early finish also means a significant loss of revenue from ground attendance and television ads.

Viewership is understandably going down, even in India. A Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) report that looked at cricket viewership patterns in India found that the 14 Test matches played in 2018 (involving top-draw contests like India-Australia and India-England matches) registered about 211 million viewership impressions. The corresponding figure for 19 T20 matches was at 446 million viewership impressions (the 20 ODIs garnered 367 million). That year’s Indian Premier League (IPL) edition, despite being played less than two months, in comparison clocked 731.3 million impressions.

“We will have to wait and watch what happens going ahead,” Vengsarkar says, while talking about the likelihood of whether the WTC can revitalise interest in the Test format. “But Test matches still have their traditional followers. Just look at the matches in England or Australia or India. They still get people in the stands.”

But the pandemic is changing things now. Its economic fallout, with cancelled matches and an increase in the cost of hosting them, is making Test cricket unaffordable to many boards. Former ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat told reporters last year that the condition of many smaller boards is precarious and without enough cash flow, there could be “some casualties”. Even Jason Holder, the captain of the West Indies Test team till recently, was candid about his fears. “We only really make money from England (when they tour the West Indies), and I think India. We break even with Pakistan and Australia, and all the rest of the series we play are losses. But in these trying times only England, Australia and India can probably host cricket. Outside of that, the smaller territories are struggling financially to get cricket on,” he said at a press conference during their tour of England.

The financial value of Test cricket is hidden in India because it comes bundled, along with the rest of the Indian teams’ matches across formats, to the broadcaster. Star India acquired the broadcast and digital rights for all domestic cricket under BCCI for five years for around $944 million (or Rs 6,138.1 crore) in 2017. Each match thus earns BCCI about Rs 60 crore, whether it is a dull Test match between, say, India and Afghanistan, or a T20 India-Australia match.

The media rights of three major cricket properties—the IPL, cricket played in India, and ICC events, from 2023 onwards—will soon be up for grabs. And the rumblings have already begun.

Uday Shankar, the former chairman of Star and Disney India who transformed the cricket economy by bringing in fat cheques, admitted that the current model of the game was becoming unsustainable. According to him, a calendar year was packed with meaningless bilateral games. “Fans want more of T20, followed by ODIs and very few want Test cricket. In that they want iconic Test cricket—India versus Australia, England versus Australia, India versus England. Nobody wants just any random Test match. But the cricket administration still seems to be in denial,” he told the Times of India last year, adding, “They’ve got to look ahead and not get nostalgic about the past.” Shankar has spoken about the need to revisit the idea of the Test match for some time. According to him, Test matches have to be re-imagined like a fine-dining experience, something one dips into only for special occasions. Star India’s broadcasting rival Sony Pictures Networks has also claimed that the pandemic will lead to a correction in the valuation of cricket in India. “All the properties were bought at a premium and are not making any money…The landscape is definitely going to change because I don’t think one person can buy all the rights now,” Rajesh Kaul, Sony Pictures Networks’ CRO Distribution and Sports Business head was quoted as saying in Hindustan Times.

It may appear that the WTC final next week is the most important fixture in this calendar year, but for the cricket economy, it is the IPL that will be completed in a few months in the United Arab Emirates. BCCI earns about $510 million every year from the broadcasting and digital rights of the tournament (that is, $2.55 billion for a five-year contract from Star India). It is estimated to be as valuable, on an annual basis, as those of England, Australia and India combined. Since the IPL is just 60 matches annually, that’s about $8.5 million cost per game, about four times that of the National Basketball Association and two-thirds of the English Premier League.

The riches of the IPL and other T20 leagues that have mushroomed across the world have been distorting the cricket economy for some time. India, Australia and England have managed to hang on to their stars and not lose them to the many leagues floating around because it can give them contracts worth large sums. Not so for most countries, which has created a troupe of globe-trotting mercenaries who would much rather play this format, hopping from auction to auction, and only occasionally turning up for their country.

Will Test cricket then become a niche product, something just three or four cricket teams play, in the next few years? According to an advertising executive, who has previously worked with TV channels broadcasting cricket shows, it is already headed that way. “Cricket is growing rapidly. But all the growth is happening only in the T20 segment,” he says, requesting anonymity. “Cricket, unlike other sports, has always revolved around country versus country contests. Leagues like the IPL have been changing this. And the pandemic will probably accelerate this and shift cricket increasingly towards a club versus club concept. Going ahead, as these leagues further expand, more and more cricketers will be absorbed there. The room for Test cricket will only keep shrinking,” he says.

How then can Test cricket’s future be secured? Is there a way to make it more contemporary, unshackling it from the nostalgia of purists while also not entirely giving in to the demands of the market? The ICC is believed to be considering the proposal of a four-day-long Test match for 2021-31, although that has led to condemnation from many current and past cricketers. Some, such as former Australian captain Ian Chappell, have in the past even suggested a three-day affair with more overs on a single day.

Gaekwad believes too much tinkering will ruin the game. There are already interesting changes, he says, such as the day-and-night Test matches, although he draws the line at reducing the number of days.

“I have been hearing Test cricket will die for a long time. They said it would be over when ODIs started. But it is still here,” Gaekwad says. “I don’t think it will disappear. Maybe it will have to change a bit.”

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