There has been a constant worry, or at least a purported one at least, that the advent of T20 cricket could cause early deaths of the other two formats of the game. The recently concluded ODI series between India and Australia, however, is said to have got TRPs which trumped even the likes of Champions Trophy and Champions League, thus making those ODI obituary-writers eat the humble pie for now.
And looking at the manner in which the Champions Trophy had panned out, the support for the fifty overs format would have given the organisers s breather.
This beggars the other question now. What about the test matches? Is there a reasonable viability of this format in the future or will it slowly go through the various transformations planned for it – pink balls, day and night games and so on – and lose its charm to be a long lost version of the game? To my mind, the tinkering around in five day games could be justified, but the inherent issue that needs to be addressed has to be that of the nature of the pitches.
As far as memory serves me, it wasn’t too long ago when the WACA at Perth, the Kingsmead in Durban, the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi, Wellington in New Zealand and Leeds in Headingley had their own set of characteristics that assisted the bowlers a trifle more than they do currently. These are result-oriented pitches which assist different forms of bowling – spin, swing, pace and bouncy – thus making them stand out of the pack.
However, slowly, but steadily, there is a growing concern that most of these wickets may go down the way of the others, where run-scoring would become much easier scalping wickets. While batting could b afforded more advantage than bowling, it is the irrational differences which give rise to boring, high-scoring draws, that in turn, keep the crowds at home.
It must be added here that most of the results in test matches are obtained despite the nature of the pitches. The batsmen easily maul their bowling counterparts and in turn set up the game for their sides, making the role of the bowlers almost redundant or overly dependent on the scores set by the batsmen. It is time that the ICC realises this conundrum and allows the host countries to make pitches that suit their own bowlers and ensures that the twenty wickets are taken at a fair clip. As much as the spectators like to see the boundaries, an over-excess of the same will almost make boundary-hitting a monotonous exercise to view. The reason why the fans enjoyed the batting of the likes of a Tendulkar or a Lara or even Laxman at their peak was because they had to see through some really nasty periods of play against bowlers spitting venom on wickets that allowed them to. Not any more!