Is there a future for test cricket?

[The Purple Cow]

Is there a future for test cricket?

Test cricket will survive because commercial TV loves it. It has a very high viewer profile which means you can charge more for adverts than other TV programs with similar or slightly better viewer figures.

Also the production-costs-per-hour for test cricket are spectacularly low, you set up your O.B. unit and your cameras and you've got 40 to 50 hours of TV.

[delicatemoth]

Is there a future for test cricket?

Test cricket will never attract the low attention span sports fan, whether it's a world championship or not. As was observed at the time, the ECB dropped a huge ricket in letting tests go off terrestrial TV, thereby losing all the momentum of the Ashes 2005 series, but those of us who can't watch them still follow them.

I still think 2020 is more of a threat to the one-day game. I suspect that players still love playing Tests and see them as the supreme challenge. But 2020 is a bit like one-day with the dull overs taken out, and I think it could really have an impact there..

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Is there a future for test cricket?

The problem for test cricket in the modern day is that, unlike a set-piece one-day tournament, it never "leads" anywhere. There isn't a "World Champion". Sponsors of team sports demand a world champion, it's in their nature.

They need to come up with a way of making the various series lead somehwere so that, once every four years or so, the top four have to meet in sets of (5-match) series to lift a "World Cup" in semi-finals and finals.

Or, possibly, some kind of squash-ladder style league set up, where in each round of matches it's

1v2 (loser becomes 3)
3v4 (winner 2, loser 5)
5v6 (winner 4, loser 7)
7v8 (winner 6, loser 9)

and then you play the next round of matches from the new positions.

Might result in a huge run of Australia v SA, then India, then SA, but so be it. At least each time it would be for the crown of "World Champions".

The immense popularity of the two test series that really do matter - England v Australia and India v Pakistan - proves that test match cricket isn't dead, but it's the need to inject a bit more of a "point" into series like England v South Africa that needs looking into.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Is there a future for test cricket?

I might watch it. It's on at the right time, rather like Crossroads used to be.

Let's not dignify it with its own thread though.

Is there a future for test cricket?

I'll watch it if I can, because I'm a gannet for all things England, but I'm watching as an indicator of how the team are doign in pressure situations, I don't care who wins the money, if they're sensible then they should all be set for life these days by making it to internatinoal level and top club level.

[E10 Rifle]

Is there a future for test cricket?

I'm becoming more pessimistic, despite not being averse to a bit of Twenty20, yet only earlier in this decade we were talking about a new golden age of Test cricket - on the back of the various enthralling Aus-WI series of the Nineties, India's win over Australia in 2001 and the way Steve Waugh's own team had raised style and standards in Test cricket to new levels.

The things that powered such developments haven't gone away, but the sheer financial disparity created by Twenty20 has certainly blown it off course.

The IPL and T20 World Cups I can take, but this Stanford thing really is a pointless pile of bollocks isn't it? I won't be watching it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Is there a future for test cricket?

Packer wasn't completely forgotten. The players did much better out of "official" cricket afterwards, otherwise they wouldn't have come back.

I'm as pessimistic as you.

[Jimski]

Countries falling over themselves to organise the richest domestic 20/20 competition. Players pulling out of tests to play in them. Countries pulling out of tests so their players can play in them. Other countries arranging international 20/20 competitions. Nobody wanting to play in Pakistan any more. The West Indies a joke. Is the end nigh for test match cricket?

Honestly, I am starting to fear the worst. In the end I think it's the only form of the international game that really "matters", but I suspect I am fast seeing myself hold a minority viewpoint. Do people think test match cricket will still exist in 25 years time? (And if it does will it be some kind of rare thing where countries play around 5 tests a year just to pretend they still care?)

Or is this 20/20 madness just a blip, an equivalent of the Kerry Packer years - quickly forgotten as normal service is resumed?