‘It has become unsafe to buy a ticket for day three of a Test’
As the economists would say, there are both supply and demand-side considerations here. The England and Wales Cricket Board cannot for much longer invite sides to tour here who are so uncompetitive that, unless facing a Test team composed of minor counties or under-19 players, they face inevitable and swift defeat. And they need to ask themselves how long punters will continue to pay handsomely – very handsomely, when one factors in not merely the high price of tickets, but the cost of travel, accommodation and so on that are entailed in going to a Test match – to watch what is now for the most part blatantly uncompetitive cricket of the sort just displayed at Lord’s. It always used to be the case, if one were planning to attend a Test match, that one did not bank on seeing much or any play on the fifth day. I was taking a friend to the cricket on Friday, but we called it off on Thursday evening. Things have come to a depressing pass when it has become unsafe to buy a ticket for the third day of a Test match.
West Indies are so mediocre for several reasons, all distressingly well-rehearsed. Many young sportsmen in the Caribbean are attracted by the culture of the United States, and so favour basketball over cricket. Most of the best cricketers the team has would rather play highly remunerated T20 franchise cricket, and I cannot blame them – cricketing lives are short and cricketers’ families have to be provided for. And the cricketing authorities in the West Indies have very little money, thanks to such a vast proportion of the game’s wealth now being channelled into the bank accounts of a few very rich Indians: the latest valuation on the IPL is $16.4 billion (£11.9 billion). The tiniest fraction of that sum would be life-changing for West Indies cricket.
‘The ECB should consider ripping up the Future Tests Programme’
Whether or not the Tests against Sri Lanka – another enfeebled team – go in a similar fashion later in the summer, the ECB needs to think very carefully, even to the extent of ripping up the Future Tests Programme: because two- or three-day Tests cannot go on. They will tend not to happen against Australia or India, but Australia or India cannot tour every other year (at least, one assumes they can’t: but the world is so mad now that who knows?) South Africa sent a third XI to New Zealand earlier this year because so many of their best people were playing franchise cricket. The game is on shaky foundations there as, for different reasons, it is in Pakistan, which has a huge reservoir of talent. Hardly anyone in New Zealand now watches Test cricket. Ireland, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe can barely give each other a good game. Thanks to the disproportionate allocation of resources, whether human or financial, Test cricket as we knew it has had it.
For the moment, in years when neither Australia nor India are touring, the ECB should invite a Rest of the World XI comprised of players from all the other Test-playing nations to tour England; and by that I mean tour. Before starting a Test series, and in between Tests, they should play full-strength county sides in first-class matches. The purpose of this would be twofold: to give the players some first-class experience in the middle, so that no one ever again turns up for a Lord’s Test without having played a first-class game for six months; and to whip up interest in proper cricket among an increasingly cynical public. This West Indies team drew last week at Beckenham with an English XI composed mainly of second-XI players from the counties, and made heavy weather of that. Annihilation at Lord’s was always on the cards.
The alternative to a radical rethink of how we play Test cricket is either for the supply to be cut off ruthlessly, because it is so inferior for the most part, or for people simply to stop watching the rubbish that is put on for them. This will have terrible effects for county clubs that stage the matches, and for MCC, whose members will drift away if their already meagre diet of proper cricket at Lord’s is cut further. These questions, as with those about creating a two-code structure to have separate pools of first-class and white-ball cricketers, have been delayed for too long. The Lord’s Test showed plainly why they must not be delayed any further, however brutal the reality may be.