MinuteWaltz
Member
Taking Test Cricket Forward
Kind of a tangent here, but it somewhat goes back to my earlier statement that restricting national team play does more harm than good.
I'm new to cricket, just started following the game earlier this (northern hemisphere) fall, and I'm American, so I don't come from a cricketing culture where everyone knows the game. Feel free to take my opinions with a grain of salt on that basis, but as a newcomer to the game with a fresh set of eyes, these are my observations about the state of the game:
First, cricket overall is stagnant. Everyone knows this, but it is worth repeating. Part of the reason for this is the attitude I've seen expressed by some (on this board, on cricinfo) that test cricket doesn't need to grow, that it's fine the way it is. With all due respect, cricket does need to grow. The sport is only played significantly in five areas of the world (British Isles, Southern Africa, Indian Subcontinent, Australia/New Zealand, and the Caribbean). It is at best a niche sport outside of those areas. On top of this, cricket is sliding somewhat in the Caribbean and is damn near in limbo in Zimbabwe. In response to this, no one seems to feel the barriers to play internationally should be relaxed. Associate nations have to work their way through a convoluted World League structure just to play ODI, and even the nations that actually care about cricket (Ireland for example) have to pay their dues as a non-test associate before they can even represent their nation on the highest levels of cricket. There are even mumblings about stripping Zimbabwe's or Bangladesh's test status, further restricting the breadth of the game world-wide. No other sport requires nations to jump through such beaurocratic hoops to simply represent themselves in international play.
Second, cricket steadfastly refused to innovate. Similar to baseball in the US, both sports have their greatest strength and greatest burden is their history and tradition. The later can impede progress and cause the sport to be slow to react to changing conditions. Case in point, cricket still refuses to play test matches under artificial lighting conditions. I realize it is tradition to play under natural light, but ODIs have successfully been played under floodlights for years. If test cricket did the same, shortened days of play such as yesterday's NZ-WI test wouldn't occur, and the game could be moved to the evening when people are off work and out of school and can go to the game in larger numbers. The same tradition holds back expansion of the sport. Any argument for adding more test nations is met with the response that it will water down the records, statistics, and history of the game. This is true, but is the absolute sanctity of records worth the future of the game?
Third, cricket spends too much time fighting itself. T20 and the IPL are the two aspects of the sport actually growing and hauling in money, yet both are largely seen as upstarts and threats to test cricket. I'm not the first to suggest this, but cricket needs to find a balance between T20 and test, between nation team competition and professional leagues. Perhaps this could be accomplished by cordoning off a portion of each calender year for the various aspects of the sport, perhaps not, but those in power in cricket cannot keep trying to jam the same square peg (test cricket first, everything else second) into a circular hole.
Again, these are my observations as a relative outsider to the game. Enjoy ripping them apart.
Kind of a tangent here, but it somewhat goes back to my earlier statement that restricting national team play does more harm than good.
I'm new to cricket, just started following the game earlier this (northern hemisphere) fall, and I'm American, so I don't come from a cricketing culture where everyone knows the game. Feel free to take my opinions with a grain of salt on that basis, but as a newcomer to the game with a fresh set of eyes, these are my observations about the state of the game:
First, cricket overall is stagnant. Everyone knows this, but it is worth repeating. Part of the reason for this is the attitude I've seen expressed by some (on this board, on cricinfo) that test cricket doesn't need to grow, that it's fine the way it is. With all due respect, cricket does need to grow. The sport is only played significantly in five areas of the world (British Isles, Southern Africa, Indian Subcontinent, Australia/New Zealand, and the Caribbean). It is at best a niche sport outside of those areas. On top of this, cricket is sliding somewhat in the Caribbean and is damn near in limbo in Zimbabwe. In response to this, no one seems to feel the barriers to play internationally should be relaxed. Associate nations have to work their way through a convoluted World League structure just to play ODI, and even the nations that actually care about cricket (Ireland for example) have to pay their dues as a non-test associate before they can even represent their nation on the highest levels of cricket. There are even mumblings about stripping Zimbabwe's or Bangladesh's test status, further restricting the breadth of the game world-wide. No other sport requires nations to jump through such beaurocratic hoops to simply represent themselves in international play.
Second, cricket steadfastly refused to innovate. Similar to baseball in the US, both sports have their greatest strength and greatest burden is their history and tradition. The later can impede progress and cause the sport to be slow to react to changing conditions. Case in point, cricket still refuses to play test matches under artificial lighting conditions. I realize it is tradition to play under natural light, but ODIs have successfully been played under floodlights for years. If test cricket did the same, shortened days of play such as yesterday's NZ-WI test wouldn't occur, and the game could be moved to the evening when people are off work and out of school and can go to the game in larger numbers. The same tradition holds back expansion of the sport. Any argument for adding more test nations is met with the response that it will water down the records, statistics, and history of the game. This is true, but is the absolute sanctity of records worth the future of the game?
Third, cricket spends too much time fighting itself. T20 and the IPL are the two aspects of the sport actually growing and hauling in money, yet both are largely seen as upstarts and threats to test cricket. I'm not the first to suggest this, but cricket needs to find a balance between T20 and test, between nation team competition and professional leagues. Perhaps this could be accomplished by cordoning off a portion of each calender year for the various aspects of the sport, perhaps not, but those in power in cricket cannot keep trying to jam the same square peg (test cricket first, everything else second) into a circular hole.
Again, these are my observations as a relative outsider to the game. Enjoy ripping them apart.
