How can we make test cricket more popular, viable, enjoyable?

I'm a limited overs cricket fan and ex player. I've only ever played 30-50 over cricket and it's always floated my boat. At a very modest level i have been quite successful. I watch test cricket also but whereas i regretted even having to take a pee in some of the Big bash and IPL T20s i, like most people i know, happily leave the tests for an hour and return to see what, if anything exciting has happened. I do know that the majority of traditional cricket followers will say that's barmy and i'm guilty as charged in that case. But i honestly feel test cricket MUST change in a few ways to get the followers up in number and to make it more attractive and viable financially.
How would YOU change the longer format?
For me, we have to eradicate bore draws. As soon as the first team piles up 500+ it's almost always a draw if the teams are evenly matched generally speaking. Unless the pitch implodes which can happen of course. Especially on the sub continent where i have been lucky enough to play.
But that brings me to pitches. Winning the toss can have an advantage far too big for it to be an even contest especially when one team could win all 5 tosses and thus get a big favour in a long series. That slurs the series result enormously.
Bringing players off for 'bad light'. Wottalottabollix. If day night tests and night ODIs are safe and fine then so is batting on when the lights take over. Change the colour of the damn ball if you really must but taking players off with 14 overs left and a team 9 down, 200-odd behind, making it a draw is pure, unadulterated farce. That is the worst aspect of all in test cricket. If you can't face Archer or Cummins under lights then don't make yourself available for your country!
Anyhow, i'd love to know if i'm alone in wanting change but otherwise please do tell how you would alter the 5 day game.
Many thanks.

Yeah, bad light is a shitshow, most of us agree on that. And taking the decision out of the hands of the batsmen has only made it worse.

There’s not too many draws these days, in England we rarely need day 5 unless weather intervenes. On the subcontinent it’s maybe a fair point.

What I’d say, though, is that T20 is like an instant-thrills action movie, initially gripping but forgettable. Whereas Test cricket is like an epic multi-series box set, you take the slow parts to build the plot and drive up the tension, and the best ones live long in the memory. Alternatively it’s like a McDonald’s versus a three-course meal.

beamer wrote:Yeah, bad light is a shitshow, most of us agree on that. And taking the decision out of the hands of the batsmen has only made it worse.

There’s not too many draws these days, in England we rarely need day 5 unless weather intervenes. On the subcontinent it’s maybe a fair point.

What I’d say, though, is that T20 is like an instant-thrills action movie, initially gripping but forgettable. Whereas Test cricket is like an epic multi-series box set, you take the slow parts to build the plot and drive up the tension, and the best ones live long in the memory. Alternatively it’s like a McDonald’s versus a three-course meal.

Well put Beams.

Draws are relatively rare nowadays. India's efforts in saving the match in Sydney were memorable.

Each of the 3 Tests that have been running all offer a lot of excitement.

The only thing I would change is the bad light rules in stadiums that have good lights.

I figured after thet India series the old girl's in good shape.

fix the bad light rule and do something about the over rates, as there is too much time wasting.

Fair points except the T20 Macdonalds comparison. T20 is enormously popular precisely because it is so exciting to watch. We need to accept change in cricket as we do in all facets of life or you just get left behind. Almost every young cricket fan I know prefers the one day stuff.
I'd say limited overs cricket is 4 small courses of exciting to eat smoked salmon, fine cheese, steak cubes and posh bread. Test cricket is a mountain of slow eaten fries!!!
What today's game shows is that 4 day tests would be the best way of making it even less exciting. This game would have been a bore draw after a day and a half.
The old school need to rethink and stop writing off T20s. That's the future of our game for sure. Money talks after all.

T20 is like red cordial for people with attention spans of a gnat.

Great Tests are memorable for a lifetime.

I have yet to hear of a 'great T20' and actually doubt one has been played that will be remembered for more than 10 minutes.

A T20 cannot aspire to be more than a cartoon, whilst a Test can be a masterpiece. There is no scope in a T20 for a heroic turnaround, no Laxman and David heroics, a bowler cannot bowl 50 overs and take 8-180, Joe Root cannot make 600 runs in 3 successive innings.

Tests and WC finals. You may as well plan to forget the rest, because you will.

it is ironic that this question has been posed shortly after two magnificent test series involving Australia - neither of which we won - and in the middle of three enthralling Tests all of which are likely to be remembered for years.

Coverpoint wrote:Fair points except the T20 Macdonalds comparison. T20 is enormously popular precisely because it is so exciting to watch. We need to accept change in cricket as we do in all facets of life or you just get left behind. Almost every young cricket fan  I know prefers the one day stuff.
I'd say limited overs cricket is 4 small courses of exciting to eat smoked salmon, fine cheese, steak cubes and posh bread. Test cricket is a mountain of slow eaten fries!!!
What today's game shows is that 4 day tests would be the best way of making it even less exciting. This game would have been a bore draw after a day and a half.
The old school need to rethink and stop writing off T20s. That's the future of our game for sure. Money talks after all.

Nobody’s writing off T20s, but it is McDonald’s cricket. More people probably eat McDonald’s than fillet steak on a daily basis, but it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a market for both. I do enjoy the occasional McDonalds (well, I did, back in the days when getting one didn’t involve waiting in a queue of infectious teenagers) but it’s not very satisfying or memorable and you’re hungry again pretty quickly. Pretty much how I feel about T20 cricket, it’s a good day out or passes a couple of hours on TV but it’s a bit of a lottery and there’s so few games that stick in the mind. I’ll watch international and English county T20 but I have absolutely no interest in the franchise circus leagues, because the teams mean nothing to me and the players change every year anyway.

Anyway, I think you’re preaching to the wrong audience here, we’re all pretty much cricket traditionalists really... it’s like someone coming in and trying to convince me that the shit in the charts today is better than Oasis 

beamer wrote:Anyway, I think you’re preaching to the wrong audience here, we’re all pretty much cricket traditionalists really... it’s like someone coming in and trying to convince me that the shit in the charts today is better than Oasis 

Or maybe convincing my dad that Oasis were as good as the band they were inspired by, The Beatles? Which would put an you as an Oasis fan (yes i love them too) in the same position a T20 fan is on here!
Yes i realise that a long running forum, with from what i can tell a very small audience of same-minded traditionalists will prefer the longer game. I had the tin hat on early doors and it's bomb proof, but i maintain that test cricket is in trouble unless it changes. I have read some of the suggestions and a few need to happen like yesterday.
Fines in runs for slow over rates and time wasting in general. India took almost 7 minutes to bowl an over of spin today and the umpires should have intervened there and then. Play on under lights. That's what the ferking things have been installed for, not to look at. Get rid of leg byes. No way should a batsman miss the ball and get 4 runs from a great delivery that had him playing and missing. 5 days of 95 overs to help get more positive results. 10.30 am starts not 11 am. There are a dozen things we could do to help the long (and often dreary) form of the game.
But T20s are here to stay folks, will always be immensely popular (or are the thousands of people who pay good money for the IPL and Big Bash all rich morons?) and the old fashioned critics will have to suck it up i'm afraid. The changes made to other sports i follow have been a great help in general and tests can be helped also, but not if we are all scared to death of change.

Summing up. T20 is a 180 minute blast in a Ferrari 458 Speciale.
Test matches are 5 days trudging across the continent in a diesel Land Rover! :-)
Which would you choose? !

Maybe you should go to a rugby union forum and try and sell league to them, or vice versa... you’ll have more success 

We’re not saying T20 isn’t here to stay, fine if that’s what brings the money in, though why we need an even more butchered 16.4 over cup is beyond me... if it doesn’t have six-ball overs it’s not even cricket, according to the laws.

Disappointingly, it seems we live in an era of populism. Where the basketballisation of cricket is celebrated.

McDonalds won't go broke next week, and more people will transit the drive-through for a burger than will attend 5 star restaurants, but the burgers won't be remembered in the same way as the three course meal or banquet full of unexpected surprises.

There will be new memes and cartoons every week, making us giggle, but they won't be remembered in the same way as the best works in the Louvre or the Musee d'Orsay.

If T20 gets a new audience - great. If people - especially kids - are attracted initially to T20 and then develop some appreciation of the nuances of the longer game - great. Shorten Tests to four days - just fark off.

Tests are not immutable as you've sought to infer in order to tear them down ... in classic straw man style ... the game has continued to evolve since its inception with changes to the number of balls in an over, underarm v overarm, lbw law changes, protective equipment for batsmen and fielders, rules for catches taken after such equipment has been hit, the DRS system ...

At the end of the day, despite these prior changes and any possible tweaks to such things as leg byes being abolished and better policing of existing laws on the use of allocated time, Test cricket remains a contest between bat and ball, and there is the capacity over two innings per side for a story to unfold, ebb and flow, surprise, and so on. Headingly 1981? Laxman+ Dravid in Calcutta? The Tied Test(s)? Sydney 2021?

T20 is a contest between two teams of sloggers, with bowling skills like swing, seam, consistency, and pressure all largely irrelevant on the bland highways upon which these tonking contests are conducted.

Burgers. Tasted one, you'd tasted them all. Tell me who won the IPL 3 years ago (and all the heroic performances that occurred in the series) without looking them up. Compare the fog that question induces with a question on any of the WC finals, ever; the Trent Bridge Ashes Tests of 2005 or 2015; or the West Indians Hopeful defeat of England at Headingly a few years ago (and btw, what other memories does the mention of that ground conjure?). Ask an Indian about Ajit Wadekar leading India to England in 1971, or Rahane in Australia in 2020-21. These things will be remembered for a lifetime by those who witnessed them.

The T20 crowd is Australia's basketball crowd. Not league, not union, by Rugby 7s. it's fun, like a 6 pack of Yellowglen, but it's not champagne. It's digestible and forgettable. The crowd are not necessarily rich, not necessarily morons, but they're not really cricket fans.

There's been some great Test cricket played over the last few days, if you're interested, and there's the prospect of another interesting result today. All four results are possible on day 5. I think England will win this time, as I don't believe India can pull off another miracle so soon after the last ... but the prospect is there.

Cover point: where Test teams put their best fieldsman (eg Lloyd, Sheahan, Bland, R Edwards, V Richards, Rhodes), and T20 teams hide their worst or leave the real-estate vacant

Ironic, eh Alanis?

I really don't see the point of an argument that ODI/T20 is better or worse than Tests.

Many of us will take the view that Tests are King. Others will say the short form is better. It is in the eye of the beholder.

Personally, Tests will always be a better form of the Great Game than the short form. But I will never decry a cricket supporter's view that prefers one form or the other.

It's all cricket, and more power to it.

skully wrote:

It's all cricket, and more power to it.

But not as we know it Jim.

I'd be more impressed if there were dangerous green tips or Bunsen Burners served up. As it is the BBL teams field some players who are not up to first class cricket or have long retired.

IWorse T20 has arguably led to some talented players being no longer capable of playing first class cricket. Oz's captain Finch and Maxwell would not get a game for Victoria in the Shield. I worry for Fraser-McGurk a talented young Victorian that he will be lost to the first class game.

The best ODI I can remember was Bevan's NYD Sydney miracle, but well in the top 5:would be the early December 1992 game also v WI when Australia defended about 130. Taylor won MOM with 9 runs, threw or four catches at first slip one of which made the Classic Catches finals, and captaincy. The tension level was higher for longer than for the Bevan game.

Also worth remembering that Bevan and company were also chasing less than 200

... on a pitch where bowling was relevant

Fred Nerk wrote:Cover point: where Test teams put their best fieldsman (eg Lloyd, Sheahan, Bland, R Edwards, V Richards, Rhodes), and T20 teams hide their worst or leave the real-estate vacant

Ironic, eh Alanis?

Like ten thousand spoons...

horace wrote:

skully wrote:

It's all cricket, and more power to it.

But not as we know it Jim.

I'd be more impressed if there were dangerous green tips or Bunsen Burners served up. As it is the BBL teams field some players who are not up to first class cricket or have long retired.

IWorse T20 has arguably led to some talented players being no longer capable of playing first class cricket. Oz's captain Finch and Maxwell would not get a game for Victoria in the Shield. I worry for Fraser-McGurk a talented young Victorian that he will be lost to the first class game.

Jade Dernbach regularly hit 90mph early in his career, and then ruined his game with all the trickery and whiz bangs required of seamers in T20 cricket.

He was always shite, did well to land a couple in a row on the cut strip... he was never likely to be a Test bowler, though I feared the selectors would take a punt on him at one point (did he actually make a squad once?)