The Death of Test Cricket

As I write this editorial, another world cup has come round. This time it is the women’s T20. T20, for the uninitiated, is the shortest form of cricket. Each team has twenty overs (that’s 120 balls) to score as many runs as possible. It’s typically fast and exciting, with a premium on big hitting, theatre and spectacle.

Its rise in popularity has had a fundamental impact on the cricket as a whole. Politically, it has shifted the centre of power over the game to India (where T20 is most popular) and away from England. The nations represented in the current women’s world cup are not all from traditional cricket playing nations (which roughly means that they are not all part of the Commonwealth).

But some people have questioned whether short forms of cricket (and there are several) are eroding the traditional game. In particular, test cricket seems to be under threat. Test cricket is the longest form of the game, as played at the international level. A test lasts five days, with the expectation that at least 90 overs are bowled in a day. Each team gets two opportunities to bat, and in contrast to short forms of cricket, a team bats for as long as it can (its innings ending only when all its batters are out).

It is noticeable that test cricket plays a very small part in the international women’s game. An international series will typically be contested through various short games, perhaps with a token test match. Women’s cricket might then be seen to be heralding the format that will be the future of all cricket. But, if the test match were to die out something important will be lost. Sports pose their own distinctive challenges to their players, and as such their own distinctive explorations of what it is to be human. The rules of test cricket have a significant peculiarity. They entail that a team’s objectives in a game are skewed. When batting, a team’s initial goal is not to win, but rather not to lose. More precisely, the team seeks to bat for so long that there is insufficient time left to bowl it out twice. If neither team can bowl out its opponents twice the game is called a ‘draw’. (It’s actually ‘no result’ but cricket terminology rarely worries too much about the niceties of ordinary English language usage.) So, not losing takes precedence over winning.

What this means is that test cricket encourages slow, defensive play. Not losing your wicket (i.e. not getting out) is more important than scoring runs. This is the opposite of T20. It’s hard to bowl out a whole team in twenty overs, so even if an individual is out, there is nearly always a replacement waiting.

Test cricket poses an important and demanding challenge to the batter, and through that challenge, it might be suggested, offers a profound exploration and even a reminder of what it is to be human. The test batter might be expected to bat for several hours if not, on extreme occasions, days. Test cricket thus requires patience and self-discipline to stay in (and to ‘build an innings’ in cricketing terminology). In a fast, consumerist society, test cricket offers a perhaps nostalgic glimpse of a world where the capacity for deferred gratification was still to be valued. The concern prompted by the rise of T20 was that this discipline was being lost. Young players coming into test cricket are now schooled in T20 and other short forms. They expect to score fast and perhaps cannot do otherwise.

More positively, it might well be suggested that they have learnt new batting techniques that allowed them to score faster, and test matches do seem now to end in a draw less often. But then, there is another complaint about T20.James (1983)famously celebrated the beauty of the cricketer. A well-performed batting shot (or the delivery of a bowler) possessed ‘significant form’, akin to that of a classical sculpture. Not so the T20 batter, for whom elegance plays a very distant second fiddle to pure power. Anything that gets the ball to the boundary, however ugly, is good. The T20 batter is inventive, sometimes marvellously so, but not stylish. Rarely, in T20, would ball would be ‘nurdled’—a wonderful term, referring a more or less effortless touch of bat to a ball in order to snatch a run.

But something odd has happened in the last two test series involving England. Firstly Ben Stokes, exemplary player of the short form, showed that he could play patiently, protected his wicket and forswearing run scoring, in order to avoid defeat. Secondly, the team selected a batter, Dominic Sibley, who actually takes pride in slowly building innings. This led to a marvellous new spectacle, with Sibley patiently building innings, anchoring the team, while others scored fast and inventively in partnership with him.

Perhaps test cricket is maturing and developing. It is finding a form that does not merely capitulate to the demands of a consumerist society—to a society that under-values patience, and self-discipline, and where deferred gratification is becoming increasingly meaningless. The new form that seems to be emerging finds a place for patience, albeit alongside the inventiveness of the T20 batter. In that remaining nod to patience, test cricket is a reminder of lost world, and emphatically a reminder of the importance of the values of that world. Jamesian aesthetics may yet have to be revised. Perhaps the aesthetic pleasure that the contemporary batter provides for the spectator rests in something other than significant form—perhaps it lies in the brutal contrast between patience and aggressive speed, between the old and the new.

Sports respond to the cultures that play and enjoy them. Their rules are tweaked and for many reasons, but one reason is to ensure the continuing relevance of the game. But more importantly, players find new ways of playing by the old rules, and thereby they find new ways to answer the challenges those rules pose—new ways to explore the potential of being human. Test cricket hopefully is developing, not dying, for the world would be impoverished if that particular challenge of patience and self-discipline were to be lost altogether.

The first six (i.e. the ball being hit across the boundary without bouncing) was scored in the women’s world cup by India’s Shafali Verma. She seemed to do little more than leave her bat in the way of the ball. She nurdled a six.