Should Lord's continue to host two Tests per summer?
The MCC is pushing to stage two Tests every summer but that demand threatens to leave other venues in the country competing for fewer fixtures.
ESPNcricinfo staff
18-May-2016
Roger Knight, president of the MCC, described Test cricket as a "London-centric" game during the club's AGM. Writing in the Guardian, Andy Bull looks at how this trend affects the other Test venues and ponders the MCC's "public function" towards the game.
Knight's numbers stack up. He pointed out that in the past three years, more than 340,000 spectators have come to Lord's to watch the first Test of the summer. At the same time, the three following Tests, all held at Headingley, have drawn only 110,000, or "32% of the figure for Lord's", as Knight put it. "And in 2012, when there were three Tests against West Indies, the crowd here was higher than the other two grounds added together."
Which is why, Knight suggested, Lord's should continue to stage two Test matches a summer. "It is by no means certain that from 2020 onwards there will be sufficient Test matches to enable MCC to be awarded two per summer," Knight said, "simply because there may not be sufficient Test matches to distribute among the grounds that would expect to stage them." He argues that "Test cricket is thriving in London, the time has come to pay attention to that fact". This time also being the moment in which Lord's faces losing its second Test. With another match at The Oval, three of each summer's seven matches are held in London and the seven remaining Test venues, many struggling for money, are competing with each other for four fixtures.