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dead pitches
Whither, Test cricket?
By Will last year, at the end of November, 13 Comments »
Friends keep asking me lately whether I’m missing covering cricket since I moved jobs. There’s no doubt I will miss it, probably when England’s Test series gets underway and certainly if Kevin Pietersen inhales the pantomime-fury foaming from the stands to cough out something truly spectacular.
But no, I won’t miss it so long as there are pitches as spirit-crushingly lifeless as the one at Kanpur. India are 417 for 2 at stumps on the first day. Ninety overs of tedium. Three sessions of bat dominating ball, crushing bowlers’ will to live and bowl. This could be classed as entertainment, and I’m sure millions of Indians loved the sight of Gambhir and Sehwag flogging it willy-nilly to all parts. But I’m equally sure that a sizeable portion of them craved to watch the nuance of technical discipline and, well, competition.
There are lots of partly cynical, often highly plausible, reasons for the state of Test cricket being in its current apparently precarious position. Pitches are certainly a factor. And there’s one thought that the TV companies demand – sorry, politely request – that matches last as long as possible in order to drive up their revenues. This means one thing: a dead pitch, lots of batting, definitely plenty of fours, and a greater chance of the match being extended into five days.
But sooner or later, this greed for cash – by whom we’re not sure or at liberty to suggest – will come back to haunt them, because I sense a very strong sense of pissed-offness by fans these days who are no longer willing to be conned by these turgid concrete slabs which offer so little to the game, rendering captaincy and tactics almost redundant and leaving bowlers reaching for diazepam or a long piece of rope. Bowlers, fans – whatever.
Yes, the game is a business. Cricinfo makes money out of it. So do dozens of TV channels. Sport is huge business. But if you don’t protect the essential fabrics of the product, those interested in making money out of it will soon disappear. And what state would the sport be in then?
13 Comments »