Test cricket is 'total cricket'

From Sharath Chandra, New Zealand
We hear many reasons for why Test cricket is the best cricket there is. One of them is that the playing field is more even as bowlers get to bowl bouncers, set attacking fields, and generally can afford to attack batsmen and get them out rather than land it on a length and hope for a false shot. Another might be that batsmen have to face a wide variety of bowlers and conditions over a single innings, so it's a surer examination of his technique and adaptability. To be sure, the list doesn't stop there, but I have always thought one important reason is almost never mentioned.

What sets Test cricket apart from the limited overs versions of the game, in my opinion, is its ability to portray cricket as it is meant to be: a team sport. Yes, Test cricket forces adaptability on its practitioners; yes, it evens out the playing field; yes, it is the truest test of character; but most important of all, it makes sure the better team wins.

In fifty-over matches, it is not uncommon to see the weaker team winning, mostly due to a century, or a five wicket haul, or a quick fifty at the death, or whatever. In twenty-over cricket the effect is even more pronounced, and as we saw at the IPL and at the world Twenty20, individual players can literally turn matches with flashes of brilliance that last but twenty minutes or so. In test matches, though, it is not that easy. Because the game is played over five days, not only do brief periods of dominance carry far less significance, teams have a greater opportunity (and more time) to nullify the debilitating effects any occasional twinkling of genius might cause.

Then, too, there is the fact that Test matches are played over four innings, which means, again, that the significance of individual contribution is further diluted. The emphasis in Test matches, therefore, is not for one person or two to step up and contribute, but for all the members of the team to stick together and pull in one direction for long enough, with more force, skill and perseverance than the other team.

What does it mean, then, when one talks of match-winning knocks in Test matches? If we were to construct a definition from the words themselves, it would seem that any innings that results in a team winning is a match-winning one. But in that case, every batsman in a Test-match winning team that has had an opportunity to bat can lay claims to having played a match-winning knock. After all, he has played an innings, and his team has won. Clearly, that won't do. So we come back to our question what exactly is a match-winning test innings?

The answer to that is very much a matter of perception. It seems to me that most of the test match innings that we remember as as 'match-winning' are second innings knocks. Consider: Laxman's 281, Lara's 153, Gilchrist's masterclass against Pakistan in his second Test; all of them were undoubtedly great exhibitions of batting, and all of them were played in the second innings.

To be sure, it's not surprising in itself that we come to see second innings centuries as match-winning. Because the second innings immediately precedes victory (or as the case might be, defeat), it seems to us that what transpires in the second innings is in some way more responsible for the eventual result. So understandably, we ascribe importance to the second-innings century: so much so that, in test matches at least, a match-winning knock must be a second innings knock. In all of this, where is the poor first innings?

Surely, if batting in the second innings is harder in some parts of the world, the reverse is also true in some parts? Batting on a first morning at Lords or Headingley is surely as hard as batting at the Wankhede on a fifth day pitch? Also, if closing out a game with runs in the second innings is important, so is setting up the game with runs in the first innings? Some might even argue that if you had to resort to getting runs in the second innings, it means you didn't do enough in the first. It looks to me, then, that in Test matches at least, a 'match-winning' knock holds little or no meaning. Any and all runs your batsmen make, irrespective of when they make it in the first or the second innings, are valuable; and whether your team wins or not is up to your bowlers and fielders.

All runs made by a batsman are equally important in a Test match irrespective of when he makes them, then where is the question of whether a particular batsman has ever played an innings of substance when the team needs it? Is it fair to criticize a batsman for not being match-winning if (like Tendulkar and Lara) he's played most of his career in teams with little or no bowling fire-power? I think not.