What would a prolonged Aussie decline do to Test cricket?

After the past couple of decades you have to enjoy Australia being crap, whether you're English or, well, anything else apart from Australian. Just like as football fans those of us who don't support them are all enjoying Liverpool's current plight and Chelsea's unexpected bad spell.

But just assume for a minute Australia continue to go downhill, perhaps have a decade like the West Indies had from 2000-10, scrapping around at the bottom of the rankings with WI, the Kiwis and even Bangladesh? After all, Test cricket doesn't tend to attract big crowds in the subcontinent, or in SA, NZ or WI these days either. It's England and Australia where the full houses and mass support for the longer game have held up. But it's clear from the later days of some of the recent Tests that Australia fans won't turn out to see their side getting thrashed in the same way as perhaps we would in England (if you've got a ticket for day 3 or 4 you turn up, make the best of it and have a few beers, even on the occasions when we're probably going to lose by an innings!)

The Ashes is the headline event of Test cricket, with the fact that there isn't really a viable World Cup format for the five-day game, and it's survived a couple of decades in which we've only had two closely contested series. But again, it's usually been England on the receiving end, and we kept building it up during all the years Australia dominated, in the hope that year would be the turning point. It came, of course, in 2005, and it will come again for Australia whether that's in 2013 or 2033. But could we end up with a scenario where before too long, England is the only country in which Test cricket makes any economic sense, and everyone else is playing two or just the one game among a mass of JAMODIs/JAMITTs?

It didn't do much harm between 1977 and 1988

lardbucket wrote:It didn't do much harm between 1977 and 1988

There was no Twenty20 then though, and even ODI cricket was still in its infancy in comparison to recent times. There's other attractions which have become dominant in all the other countries.

I'd be quite happy for them to win every test series they enter, other than the ones against us. They can lose that for 20 years please.

Won't happen though, 1989-2005 was a freak occurrence and probably won't happen again for either team in our lifetime.

We probably won't win again for another 20 years now I've said that of course.

beamer wrote:it's clear from the later days of some of the recent Tests that Australia fans won't turn out to see their side getting thrashed in the same way as perhaps we would in England (if you've got a ticket for day 3 or 4 you turn up, make the best of it and have a few beers, even on the occasions when we're probably going to lose by an innings!)

beams, in Aus, the crowds have always, well for at least 40-odd years, been great day 1 and usually 2, then drop quite sharply. Don't see any reason for that to change in the near future. 10 years might make a dip.

Bear in mind too that in some of the grounds here, 10-12 000 looks dreadful, but would fill many cricket arenas in many other countries.

I'll second Zat on the crowds front.

There seems to be this myth going around that crowds dropped away sharply at the fog* end of test matches because Aussie supporters didn't want to watch losers.

That's nonsense. The culture in Australia is to go the first two days of the Test (or days 2 and 3 if the match starts on a Friday). The grounds are big enough to accomodate large crowds on those days. Very few tickets are sold in advance for Day 4 (the 2006/7 Ashes series was an exception, which had so much hype precisely because Australia had LOST to England for the first time in ages).

The best piece of evidence I can provide from this summer is Day 3 in Melbourne. Day 3, like the previous two days was a public holiday. 68,727 people came through the gates that day. This was despite England having a lead of 350 with five wickets in hand.

Day 4 was the first work day of the Test. Australia only had four wickets left and needed 250 runs to make England bat again. The match was dead as a contest and unlikely to go for more than a session - and a dead contest is not going to encourage Melburnians to chuck a sickie and take the day off work. You'd have got the same crowd there had it been Australia with the 250 run lead.

Australians go to Test matches early when they are still an unpredictable contest. It has been this way for ages.

*The forum software changed this word to "fog", but I originally had an "a" where the "o" is.

Hass wrote:*The forum software changed this word to "fog", but I originally had an "a" where the "o" is.

The filter must be either referring to the American meaning of the word, or very anti-smoking...

I wonder if writing 'fog' works.

No, it doesn't. Which is strange, because if you write '******' it works.

Or at least it used to... What about '******'?

The big cheese has taken away more of the fun...

Hass wrote:
Day 4 was the first work day of the Test. Australia only had four wickets left and needed 250 runs to make England bat again. The match was dead as a contest and unlikely to go for more than a session - and a dead contest is not going to encourage Melburnians to chuck a sickie and take the day off work.

Agree with this, as much as we big ourselves up as fans there's no way we would have large crowds turning up to a 4th/5th day with 3 wickets left and a gazillion behind.

We don't sell tickets for 5th days in advance generally, but I'm sure 4th days are often sell-outs against major opposition and if there's going to be a reasonable amount of play and you've bought a ticket I guess you turn up. Although day 4 is usually a Sunday in England, not necessarily the case in other countries.

beamer wrote:I'm sure 4th days are often sell-outs against major opposition and if there's going to be a reasonable amount of play and you've bought a ticket I guess you turn up.

There's a bigger population base in the UK and smaller grounds.

I know quite a few people who had tickets to the 4th day at the MCG who decided it wasn't going to be worth attending. CA did their best to encourage attendance by not refunding those tickets and charging full freight for those who turned up on the day without tickets.

beamer wrote:After all, Test cricket doesn't tend to attract big crowds in the subcontinent

6 of india's test grounds attract bigger crowds than pretty much any english ground

of course we also have grounds like nagpur and mohali, which have no one but the tv crew

The One wrote:

beamer wrote:After all, Test cricket doesn't tend to attract big crowds in the subcontinent

6 of india's test grounds attract bigger crowds than pretty much any english ground

of course we also have grounds like nagpur and mohali, which have no one but the tv crew

Wankhede, Eden, Chinnaswamy and Chidambaram gets heavy attendence. Also Mohali unless the teams playing are on the weaker side. Nagpur test against Aus in 2004 had great attendence. I suspect smaller centers show lesser test audiences against weaker sides as compared to ODIs.

All I know is that when I watch tests in India all I see is empty grounds.

The silly rotation system is to blame when test are played in smaller centers where people have neither the time nor inclination to watch tests. Like Aus and England, venues for playing tests should be fixed among the bigger mainstay ones. JAMODIs should be rotated if at all.

Batman wrote:The silly rotation system is to blame when test are played in smaller centers where people have neither the time nor inclination to watch tests. Like Aus and England, venues for playing tests should be fixed among the bigger mainstay ones. JAMODIs should be rotated if at all.

tests are not rotated here...Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney is the batting order for 5 test series

In summer with 2x3 series Hobart gets the 6th test..

The Melbourne test gets vast numbers even in series against the lesser teams (actually we are now a lesser team!!)...test cricket in perth, brisbane and even adelaide - unless it is the Ashes - do not attract massive crowds...at various times the relatively poor attendances in Perth have seen calls for them to lose matches to the G which would have two per summer

there's no worries with prolonger aussie decline. In fact cricket was more popular when the West Indies were on an incline in the 80s . . . by virtue of being more charismatic than the aussie team w/fab 4.

Conf of WI incline high

taipan wrote:All I know is that when I watch tests in India all I see is empty grounds.

these might help

So all the stories we hear on these board about poor attendances at Indian tests because you have to buy a 5 day ticket are a pile of BS then.

Okay

poor attendances in nagpur and mohali yes

have you seen any of the tests in bombay, calcutta, madras or bangalore?

Which goes back exactly to what Batty says. Why hold tests in areas where there is no attendance?