What is the Future of Test Cricket?

Most of the Indian cricket fans must be aware that Test Cricket Championship is going on. At the moment, India is leading the point table after convincing wins against West Indies, South Africa and Bangladesh. The question is ‘Should we feel happy that India won these matches easily?’ or ‘Should we feel sad as there was no competition in these matches?’ These are worrying signs for the future of test cricket.

One may argue that this debate is going on for quite some time, but still teams are playing test cricket. Ashes matches are always full. When India plays against big countries like Australia and England, spectators come to watch these matches. That’s true. But the matches between these sides are always competitive and hence they are fascinating. Who would like to buy a ticket and watch boring stuff between a bat and a ball? Maybe a diehard cricket fan would watch it anyway but not the general public. Let’s see the problem areas with test cricket.

Difficult to attract the spectators

In today’s scenario, it is tough to attract working people for all five days. Even it is difficult to attract the public on holidays (Read: Saturday and Sunday) as working guys would like to rest instead of watching a cricket match in the hot sun. Also, people have a large TV set to watch these matches live on television. They can always watch matches on their smartphones or check the updated scorecard. The experience of watching a match live in a stadium cannot be compared with watching it at home on a big screen, but people can watch it as per their convivence at home.

Length of Match

A test match is played for five days. The game is played for nearly 8 hours. Add 2-4 hours of travelling. It would be around 10-12 hours of the day that spectators need to spend. And there is no guarantee that there will be a result after playing for five days. If you look around, then you see that the most popular game in the world, i.e., football, a regular match is played for 90 minutes and sometimes played for a maximum of 120 minutes. A baseball which quite similar to cricket, its match goes for a maximum 3 hours only. A hockey match gets finished in 60 minutes. So, all popular games get finished with a half-day except cricket.

There were suggestion to change the test matches from five days affair to four days. However, most current and ex-players think that the format should not be altered at any cost. But the question is how many more years we will play the test cricket in front of an empty stadium. Cricket boards and ICC are not doing enough to attract people to fill the stadiums. By just labeling test series as World Championship is not going to solve the problems that Test cricket is going through.

Impact of T20 Cricket

Test cricket is often labelled as a pure form of cricket. But it is T20 that is helping the sport to spread across the globe. Most of T20 matches are played in front of a packed house. The players also earn more money in franchise cricket rather than Test or One-day cricket. Experts criticize it but fans all over the world love it. The success of T20 is in its duration. The match gets over in 3 hours. People get to see fours and sixes. It's fun, entertainment. No one feels bad if you lose the T20 match.

However, the next generation will focus on T20 cricket only as it gives easy money and fame. Due to see the ball and hit it, the young generation finds it difficult to survive in test cricket. New cricketers have technical as well as temperament issues. This may be the reason why so many cricketers get hit on their helmets.

Too much cricket

Nowadays cricketers play continuously for 12 months. There is international cricket as well as T20 franchise-based cricket. In the past, we would feel disheartened whenever India lost a cricket match. But, we do not feel bad any more because we know that in the next few days there will be another match.

Lack of quality at the top level

Currently there are 12 cricketing nations who are qualified to play test cricket. However, test cricket is in good health in India, Australia, England.  New Zealand is playing good cricket for many decades but it is a tiny nation and has its own limitations. South Africa and West Indies are not a force anymore that they were. No nation is ready to play its cricket on the Pakistani soil. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are struggling in this format. Overall the picture is not looking rosy for Test cricket.

Test cricket needs innovations. Someone needs to come up with good innovative ideas to make test cricket more popular. A day and night test is a good idea. However, only with this idea we cannot revise the future of Test cricket.