After the thrilling if a little technology induced end to
the First Ashes test Nottingham, a friend quipped that the Test was interesting
only on account of its ODI qualities. However looking back quickly over a
century and more years of Test Matches, while one can think of any number of
Test Matches which resulted in nail biting finishes, in a little over forty
years only the 1975 World Cup finals come to that kind of closeness of contest
and there too if Lillee could bowl more than his 12 overs things would have
been different.
The West Indies Pakistan match in the first World Cup
probably comes close as Murray and Roberts added more than sixty runs to win
the match. However it was the 18 year old Miandad bowling the last over and not
Sarfaraz Nawaz. The essential quality of a cricket match over one innings or
two is that the team scoring more runs wins. By limiting a team from batting to
the end, this basic premise gets jettisoned. A team may declare but to be
forced to restrict its innings is a different ball game altogether.
The One day Cricket is struggling against t20 for the very
reason that a team blessed with extraordinary talents cannot by the very nature
use those talents to the maximum. In t20 if you have one weak bowler, he has
only four overs to hide and the spectator does not have to go through ten overs
of long hops and donkey drops. The problem that Test Matches have to counter is
mainly sociological. Cricket from early times started in rural settings and
gradually got adopted by gentlemen of leisure with income coming from India and
the West Indies. With gradual decline of such people, the retired community and
students remain the principal segment that test cricket depends on.But the
situation will auto correct and Indians can take summer and winter vacations to
include a Test match, the Australians can come to England and India and the
whole World can visit the West Indies.There are more cricket followers in the
USA then in NewZealand and it is just a matter of time before a Test Match involving
India and the west Indies at Bridgetown or Antigua with the beaches thrown will
be a big draw.
