When I sit back and dare to dream about what playing international cricket would be like, I don’t think about One Dayers or Twenty20′s, I think about taking 5 wickets in a Test Match Innings.
Why then is it that there are talks of whether Test Cricket will last, what with Twenty20 generating millions through the IPL and World Cup, and giving players fairly healthy bank balances.
The Boxing Day test at the Basin Reserve in Wellington gathered the biggest crowds to test matches in New Zealand and seemed to be becoming a tradition.
In 2004 New Zealand cricket decided to swap it for a One Day International instead. Why? Because it was more of a money earner.
Why play a test match during these peak times when you can play two or three ODI’s in the same period and get 50,000 more people through the gates?
This was only a couple of years after the England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Giles Clarke said he wanted to give County Cricket in England the chop, as it was ‘not economically viable.’
It appears views about the money involved in the longer form of cricket have been taken aboard by cricket boards around the globe, but not to the extent Clarke had wanted.
With Twenty20 being introduced into the international fold, it has further plunged test cricket’s future into doubt.
Twenty20 cricket was thought up after Stuart Robertson, a marketer at the English Cricket Board, was asked to create a game that would renew interest in the game in the UK.
He simply worked out how many overs could be fit into a three hour period after people finished work, so from 5.30 onwards.
The aim is to get as many people to the game as possible, something tests struggle with being played through the week.
Tests are not losing out through complete lack of interest, but through a combination of money making and there being more interest in the exciting form at this time.
So for now, Twenty20 will win the ratings game thanks to the timing of the games and the excitment. I guess the real test is, how do we get people through the gates during Test Matches?
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I have shared the same dream of holding the ball aloft at the end of a full day of cricket after I fivefor. Subsequently, I agree strangi, there is something distinctly romantic about a five day Test and even more so about a five match series. In fact, those ingredients are probably why the Ashes have the aura they do. Let’s just hope that such nip and tuck cricket played out over a longer periods, does not disappear.
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