The truth is finally being acknowledged; test cricket is in danger of dying.

Test cricket 'near crisis point'

By Sam Hewat


The truth is finally being acknowledged; test cricket is in danger of dying.

Cue the purists, who hate shorter formats of the game which have come to dominate player movements and television screens.

They'll say the five-day format is the way cricket is meant to be played.

But you only have to look at any test series around the world to see empty seats, meaningless results and a whole lot of unsustainable costs.

Heath Mills, the chief executive of the New Zealand Cricket Player's Association, spoke to Newstalk ZB's Tony Veitch and said the biggest problem is that test cricket lacks meaning.

"We lurch from month to month with different bilateral series between countries and they are all different in nature," Mills said.

"There'll be a test series between countries one year, then they'll play short-form the next, then there'll be three ODIs or seven ODIs or one test or three tests.

It just has no context or meaning in the greater sense."

And it's the rise of T20 cricket and the shorter forms of the game, bringing in all the cash, which are paying for the format we love, but that's sucking all the money.

"Test cricket is the biggest cost to the sport at the moment," Mills said. "I wouldn't say the game is at a crisis point, but it's nearing it."

www.nzherald.co.nz/cricket/news/article....29&objectid=11668035

Jurassic: RIP    "Short focus span?"   Dun wanna pay $$$ to nappy under newspaper
digestin' F&Cs.

The week wouldn't be complete without some journalist banging on about Test cricket being in trouble.

I don't see an empty seat in the house at Lord's.

I thought Jarrod Kimber put it best recently:

thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/06/29/cric...-with-jarrod-kimber/

the ICC wants test cricket dead..dat is what is going on.  they have been trying to kill that part of the game for a long while..a slow deterioration.  they appear to be trying to expedite the process now, speeding it up increasing attacks on test cricket

they have been slowly changing the focus to a format that is quick sharp and dumb.  their purpose is to make people stupid, dumber while paying for it.  they get them to go in droves to T20, pay a lot of money for tickets, eat tons of bad GMO food,  and ray mindlessly for the nonsense game, shorn of nationality, gutted of any real edifying drama

dat is why we have a HC now and no more manager and captain running the show.  there is no more need for them in what the IC has planned for cricket which is baseball by slightly different format

that has always been the ICC plan..yeare and years now.  you could see it slowly building u to where we are now..with a speed up in the works

I beg to differ that it does affect the bottom like plus something more important.

If you are in apposition to have a brand and negotiate the TV deals then empty stadia may not affect bottom lines but if you take the Windies, for example, they are not in apposition to negotiate great deals so the bottom line could be much better.

A combination of losing, for various reasons, and playing in from of one man and his dog does not create the atmosphere to motivate your players and additionally it does not create an atmosphere to entice youngsters.

We are fortunate in this country that we have good infrastructures, resources etc that will see 150,000, or close to it, see the Lords Test live.

The capacities of our stadia in the UK are relatively small but we do get great crowds for tests. The atmosphere is so wonderful and there is nothing better than seeing a days cricket unfold into a strategy for 5 days.

So I do think crowds are important as it appeals to sponsors, youngsters and lift your players.

It seems as if Tests are dying in the West Indies.

ICC has to be careful as the broadcasters would not be too eager with second division as the standard of the second division when it starts will not be as high as county cricket, and some will think Test records will be devalued, especially in the light of Bangladesh, for all their recent improvement, have lost 71 of their 93 Tests.

In Bangladesh's defence, they have the fourth best win/loss ratio (1.00) over the last two years, tied with New Zealand. They have shown great signs of improvement over the last two years in Test cricket.

They have a collective team batting average of 31.82 - fifth best. They are still struggling in the bowling department, especially in developing fast bowlers - their team bowling average is 39.71 - though still better than New Zealand and West Indies over the last 2 years.

There's certainly no hiding the fact that test match cricket isn't as popular as it once was, and even though you can there aren't many empty seats when the big games are played, the majority of people in them seats are the older generations. I'm 38 years old, and I class myself in that 'older generation' bracket as well by the way and I think my generation, possibly the one after me still enjoy test match cricket, a lot of younger cricket fans don't, and I think that is the real problem that this format of cricket is facing.


Many cricket fans would be outraged if test match cricket ceased to exist, but the ICC have to do what's best for cricket in general and if they feel that slowly fading out the longer format of the game would help cricket become more popular then that's the way it's going to go, like it or not.

dumb, dumber...but dumbest of all to fork over $$$  to snooze  under newspaper
do crosswords and lissen to mouse fart fur five days.  ::

The best-supported Test matches in the world are the ones that retain what the marketeers call an ‘appointment to view’ – Boxing Day at Melbourne, New Year at Cape Town, early July at Lord’s and so on – as opposed to some random date, at some random venue in India, decided upon a few weeks in advance of the match by the BCCI.