It's the pitches, stupid!

So, finally efforts are being made to make to ‘rejuvenate’ Test cricket. The ECB have proposed a day-night Test against Bangladesh next year, and the Bangladesh board has agreed. If the ICC approves, we might actually see pink balls and coloured clothing in this most traditional form of the game soon. The intentions of the authorities are certainly noble, but to borrow Greg Chappell’s expression, they’re trying to put a band-aid on cancer!

Firstly, why conduct such experiments straightaway in Tests? Shouldn’t they be tried out in first-class cricket first? I remember the Ranji Trophy final played under lights some years ago. None of the players involved had kind words about the experiment and it was dumped soon. However that was nearly 10 years ago, so the time might be ripe to give it another go. The more important question however is, is it really going to help?

The low attendances at Test matches around the world (except England and Australia) has more to do with the quality of cricket than anything else! And the quality of cricket is a direct result of the quality of pitches on which it is played. I understand that in a world where television revenue runs the game, it is inadvisable for pitches to be a minefield and have Test matches end in three days, but do they have to go to the other extreme and be so flat that planes can take off from them after the day’s play is over? (The fact that more matches are still producing results is attributable to the monumental ineptitude of some teams more than anything else!)

Whatever happened to pitches that provided movement on day one, were best for batting on days two and three, and offered turn and uneven bounce on days four and five, all the while providing enough assistance to bowlers who were willing to bend their backs and allow batsmen to play their shots? Or, to cut that lengthy sentence short, where have all the sporting pitches gone?

The pitches in Australia were once fast and bouncy, South Africa the same along with swing, England and New Zealand were a swing bowler’s haven, the subcontinent was known for its turning tracks. Even within countries, different grounds had their own kinds of pitches. The Gabba and WACA were frighteningly fast, Adelaide was a batsman’s paradise, Sydney was a turner, Melbourne was sporting, Headingley was a serious examination of a batsman’s technique and so on. But in the last couple of years, the pitches seem to have become standardised. They all look the same! Worse, they all look like the ones used in the recent England-West Indies series in the Caribbean, where bowlers were nothing more than high-quality cannon fodder. We have turned a product whose USP was the variety it offered into a commodity and we’re now asking ourselves why the sales are down.

Rather than making cosmetic changes and hoping that they work miracles, it would be better to reinvigorate Test matches by making it an even contest between bat and ball. If some Test matches don’t see the light of the fifth day, so be it. If the cricket produced on the four days is good, isn’t it heaps better than a five-day snooze fest which no one bothers to turn up for anyway? If an even contest brings people to the stadiums and gets TV ratings up, isn’t it worth it to risk an occasional three or four-day Test match? Provide the crowd a poor contest, and it hardly matters whether you provide it at night or in the day! They will still do what they are doing now. Stay away!

The bottom line is, the boards have let their financial concerns take precedence over everything else. I know it’s easier said than done, but there is a simple solution to making the Test matches more appealing. Just improve the quality of pitches, and therefore the cricket, and the other issues, including the financial ones will take care of themselves.