How many agencies does it take to destroy Test cricket? If the current Ashes series is indication, it would involve the local administrators, the International Cricket Council, and the players themselves. Not since the 19th century have two Tests in a series ended within two days. The track for the first Test in Perth was adjudged “very good” by the ICC while Melbourne’s was declared “unsatisfactory.”
Home wins have, in the points system of the World Test Championship — points as a percentage of the total available — become so important that wickets are prepared unabashedly for home bowlers. Still, Australia took a 3-0 lead within 11 days without their best attack of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon all playing together.
England won in Melbourne, but something important was missed. The wicket improved as the match progressed; however, neither team had the batters with the defence to take the match into the fourth or fifth day. The exception, England’s Joe Root, slightly off balance followed the ball and edged in the first innings, while in the second the DRS left it to the ‘umpire’s call’ for leg before.
That England made the highest total of the match to win suggested it wasn’t the 10mm grass on the wicket that was solely responsible for the result. Melbourne had more grass on it for the 2021-22 Ashes Test (11mm), as well as the New Zealand Test of 2019-20 (12mm). Those matches took three and four days respectively.
The 90,000-plus fans in the stadium seemed less inclined to blame the pitch, cheering wildly when opener Ben Duckett played forward defence in the midst of a sword-fight of an innings as England approached a win. At least some of them might have craved a defensive shot with the same keenness with which others screamed for a six.
Not an easy task
The pitch could not have been easy; but Test cricket was never meant to be easy. It is a test as much of technique and temperament as of spirit and the passion to stick it out. In a sense, the batters were playing for Test cricket itself besides their respective teams. Two-day Tests are nearly as ridiculous as two-Test series, although teams often prefer the latter thanks to the points system.
Flaws in the WTC system — and the Ashes has highlighted them — have been pointed out before. ‘Context’, that magic word, cannot be the excuse for teams not playing every other or indeed the same number of matches. Two fundamental changes suggest themselves.
One, split the 12 Test-playing teams into two divisions with the odd-ranked teams in one and the even-ranked in the other. This will eliminate the need for promotions and demotions or one strong group carrying the weak group. The god of telecasts will be propitiated too. If the two-Test series goes, it might be worth considering a three-year cycle rather than the current two.
Compromises with franchise cricket will have to be made. Recently South Africa’s Tabraiz Shamsi took his cricket board to court for denying a No Objection Certificate to play a T20 league abroad. He won the case, to give other boards something to think about.
The CEO of Cricket Australia who was suggesting recently that only Australia, India and England should play Test cricket is now talking about balancing “commercial imperatives and performance” after the Melbourne Test. Losing ten million dollars over a two-day Test can do that to an administrator.
More pertinently, Aussie great Greg Chappell wrote in ESPNcricinfo, “Two Tests failed to reach day three not due to superior skill but a glaring absence of desire. Batters slashed wildly, abandoning technique for bravado, as if playing their ‘natural game’ excused capitulation. They let down predecessors who bled for this rivalry; they shortchanged fans who braved the holiday heat; they betrayed their own generation by forsaking cricket’s core tenets – playing each ball on merit, scrapping for every run, enduring bruises for the greater good. I cannot believe any player left the field thinking they had given their all over those paltry sessions.”
In a match where the highest score was 46, nearly every dismissal diminished the game. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for Test cricket.
Published – December 31, 2025 12:09 am IST
