What does the decline of Test cricket indicate more broadly?
This article really got me thinking (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2023/jan/12/there-is-no-t-in-sa20-and-maybe-no-future-for-venerable-south-africa-test-side) about what Test cricket reflects in our modern world.
Now, I’ll make a confession here. I am not a huge cricket fan. I have never played it in a team, and the last time I watched Test Cricket for any length of time was in the early 1990’s as a bored teenager on a farm. In adulthood, I have found other things to do, and the ball tampering scandal of 2018 certainly didn’t help the sport to appeal to me again.
But the article brought to my attention some trends in the cricket world that I hadn’t realised. The main one was how unbalanced the world’s cricket universe is – and how parlous the finances of many national teams are. T20 cricket (a version played over much shorter time frames) is cannibalizing audiences and players, to the point where South Africa (among others) could not really afford to play many Test matches.
The big three nations (Australia, England and India) are all healthy enough, for a variety of reasons.
Their cricket boards are confident enough to program five-match Test series, which adds drama to the results, and allows the players to maintain a high level of fitness and skill. All three nations also have deep enough pools of talent to play well in one-day and T20 games, especially in the massive and lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL).
But for the lesser Test nations, the digital era has been far less kind. Unable to attract large audiences, both sponsors – and other cricket boards – have stayed away. Over time, this has meant that the most talented players have either joined the IPL, or left the game entirely. Those players who remain are getting fewer opportunities to compete against the best in the world, resulting in their national teams often get roundly beaten by the three heavyweights. And the cycle of decline continues.
There has been a lot written about Test cricket’s decline, and various things are thought to have contributed to it. Firstly, there are more leisure options available, especially digital ones. A related reason is that people no longer have five days to watch a full Test match, although I suspect that this has always been true. One unrelated thing is that I think our cultures have become much more diverse, and that has led to an explosion of different sports and hobbies. In broad terms, that’s a good thing, but it also means that our collective sense of who we are is less tightly bound to national sporting teams than it was 30 or 40 years ago. When I was a teenager, I would argue that a majority of Australians could name some star cricketers from both the national and competing teams. Part of this is because in the mass media era, cricket was competitive, and had huge audiences. Who could forget players like this (Four horsemen of death - West Indies) or matches like this (The Closest Test - Australia versus West Indies)?
Part of the ongoing appeal of Test cricket is precisely because it is not fast; it is strategic. There is no guarantee of an outright win, and any number of things can shift the momentum away from one team and towards the other. But in a world where almost everything is instant, how much of the population is going to develop the patience to appreciate such an activity in enough numbers to sustain this sport?
Much of modern life is organised to be “convenient” and “easy”. However, like anything else, there is a cost to be paid, even if we don’t recognize it. It’s been called the "convenience tax", although different people use the expression in different ways. To explain it, I’ll give some examples. Before about 1930, most people didn’t have labour-saving devices, so washing clothes, cleaning, and cooking all took hours and a lot of physical effort. In expending this effort, though, our ancestors developed muscles. Now many developed nations have an obesity epidemic, and we actually go to gyms and the like, and pay other people to make us exercise. Likewise, many of us were taught how to do long division and multiplication by hand as kids, but now we use calculators to get mathematical answers. As such, could we remember how to do these things now if we needed to?
Watching, understanding, and appreciating Test cricket likely appeals to individuals who can delay gratification. It requires patience, and rewards attention to detail. It may also become more appealing if more effort is required not only to learn about the players, the teams, and the pitches. To commit the time aside in order to deepen our understanding of the game, because the payoff is worth the effort, like learning a trade or a craft.
So I have paid more attention to the latest Ashes matches than I have since the 1990’s. It has been a gripping contest, with both teams having the upper hand at various times. The real challenge for myself, though, in line with what I’ve described above, is to pay attention to Test cricket when it’s not being played between the big three nations. I hope I get the chance to see (for example) the Prime Minister’s XI (11) play here in Canberra against a touring side, or to have the chance to see another team play in Sydney.
My point? All of these things are related. If we rely upon the tech firms to do everything for us, and there’s money in it, they’ll be only too happy to increase our dependence upon them. But what happens if they get hacked, or if AI takes over many of their functions? If we don’t have anyone capable of running things using older methods, then it will be a rather bumpy ride. I’m not all doom and gloom on this, but I do think we should be aware of the potential pitfalls.
As such, I wonder if the decline of Test cricket – and the values it represents – are a warning to us not to make life too easy for ourselves?
What do you think?
