NEIL MANTHORP: How Test cricket can change for the better

The Proteas said goodbye to Test cricket for nine months with a fittingly resounding victory by 284 runs at the Wanderers to conclude a 2-0 series victory against an outclassed West Indies. Though it is an eternity before the next game against India at the end of the year, there was enough to enthuse about through the winter.    

Aiden Markram is and always was a Test opener. His response to coach Shukri Conrad’s firm reminder of that fact during the first match at Centurion Park was reassuringly emphatic. Tony de Zorzi was solid and stylish in the second Test and Gerald Coetzee was a bubbling torrent of pace and energy.    

The scheduling was an act of self-harm, however. Starting the Test matches on a Tuesday and Wednesday, out of holiday season, gave neither union a chance. On the first day of both matches the paying crowd was less than 300. It was pitiful and did nothing to support the players’ call for more Test cricket.    

Calls for the International Cricket Council (ICC) to “address” the disparity in the number of Tests played by India, England and Australia compared with the “small seven” nations are largely misinformed. The host nations need to drive their own content — the international governing body merely ring-binds the fixtures. Cricket SA disingenuously allows the ICC narrative to continue when it is they that have in fact allowed the current Test schedule to materialise.    

Once India leave these shores after playing just two Tests in January, it will be another full year before Test cricket is played in SA again.   

There were three problems with the scheduling of the West Indies tour: it was arranged “backwards” with as many as possible of the T20Is and ODIs placed on weekends and public holidays. By the time the Tests were fixtured, those were the only days remaining. The second problem was the attitude towards Test cricket and the third was the length of the matches.    

One way in which more Test cricket could be played is straightforward: make the matches four days. It makes emphatic sense. The vast majority of Test matches in SA finish before the final day anyway and four-day cricket fits the calendar perfectly.    

Starting on Thursday virtually guarantees a full day’s play on Saturday with the conclusion most likely on Sunday. Three days off between Tests means another Thursday start and a three-Test series is concluded in exactly three weeks. Such a scenario would have worked perfectly for the current series.   

If each day had 98 overs scheduled rather than the current 90, which happens anyway in the event of a bit of rain, the match would be just 58 overs shorter than the current five-day Tests. In SA, the percentage of Tests finishing in the final 58 overs is so negligible it is inconsequential. Especially as they almost always include stretches of “dead” play such as delayed declarations.    

Financially and logistically, the change would be a no-brainer. Only “traditionalists” might be offended but, with respect, they would be deluded. Test cricket has a history of changing with the times, or at least the length of the contests has. From three days to timeless, the longest and purest form of the game has been adapted to fit the world in which it is played.    

And the precedents are right here with us. Six years ago Cricket SA scheduled a day-night Test against Zimbabwe in Port Elizabeth for four days. That too was a no-brainer. In the event, the fixture lasted just a day-and-a-half and that was only thanks to Markram’s 125.    

England’s one-off Test against Ireland at Lord’s in early June this year is unapologetically a “warm-up” for their Ashes campaign against Australia and is also scheduled for four days. There is no need for the “doubters” to panic. The switch from five to four days, and back again, can — and should be — voluntary.    

The host nations can already choose the length of their Test matches, they just don’t have the courage to do so often enough. Their concern — that they are diminishing the status of Test cricket and somehow offering their followers less — is radically outdated and unsupported by data. Playing Test cricket over four days rearranges an often poorly packed check-in suitcase into a more orderly, albeit still large, carry-on bag.    

If the captain of a Test team believes from the outset that his chances of enforcing victory are significantly diminished by the reduction of a contest from 450 overs to 392, then he probably isn’t a very good or confident captain. If he believes that “dead” periods of Test cricket, during which the dominant team’s objective is to grind down the opposition physically, then he would be correct. He may also not be understanding that lengthy periods of attrition, so beloved by the old-school gladiators of the game, aren’t winning any new followers, or even keeping the existing ones.