Sports

Are they trying to kill Test cricket?

The talking point amongst most people during the last week be it cricketers or non cricketers was the 2nd test match between India and Sri Lanka which was just concluded. I am sure the topic wouldn’t have been the attractive batting by both teams or for that matter the bowling as it hardly had anything to show. However the fact that the test match yielded more than a thousand runs for the loss of very few wickets was the concern of everybody which included knowledgeable and respected personalities.

Many leading and highly respected sports journalists and commentators felt that one should have looked at the bigger picture when preparing pitches such as this. Some were of the view that another nail was driven in to the coffin of test cricket. Definite logic and will surely draw the approval of many. The match was best described as boring, dull and even a huge yawn!


And they batted on and on and on

But how justified are these statements in the context of the series and Sri Lanka cricket? True Test cricket and its very existence have been challenged by the emergence of T 20 cricket and there are many novel methods being contemplated to re launch the format. One of it has been day night test cricket which is still in its stage of pregnancy being checked for its quality and practicability.

In that scenario a dull test match with nothing to look forward to from a player and spectator and of course the viewer’s point of view will just drive them away from the game causing a huge impact on the over all situation. All will agree that matches need to be more interesting and should have sporting tracks with a little grass left giving both the bat and ball a decent chance to succeed. Whilst we do agree that the logic is correct and sounds practical from a cricketing point of view, a look back at the history of matches in Sri Lanka would suggest that no captain or team management had ever opted for such tracks at all. It was always a case of taking off the grass and making it slow and play to the strength of the home team.

The Galle pitch had been a classic example which was always slow and turned and where Sri Lanka always wanted to start a series there as the chances were that they could win. Can they be faulted for this approach? However the difference then and in the last few years is that Sri Lanka had Muralitharan and Chaminda Vaas who were good enough to exploit the sluggish nature of such tracks with their craft and guile which was unfortunately not the case here. Hence when games were won even on slow tracks nobody really ever wanted to complain as it had results! At this point of the argument a factor that has to be strongly considered is no home team would want to play in to the hands of a visiting team.

I wonder whether Australia or England would have ever resorted to preparing pitches that would have helped the West Indies in the decade of the eighties when they had those fearsome pace bowlers around or for that matter did India ever give green tops when the great spinners operated in that country? These are just two examples! Who can blame them for that approach as Test Cricket is contested to win and not to please people around and if we were to look at the SSC pitch through that angle we could to a very great extent understand that the pitch was prepared in keeping with the wishes of the Sri Lankan team management. An interesting comment from the Team Coach Trevor Bayliss states that the “ Fast bowlers bowled too short and more variety will be added to the team for the next test” this seems to suggest that had the bowlers operated more on areas of good length things could have been different. Of course this is a debatable point!

Having said that speaking from a complete outsiders perspective, one would require more excitement and action in Test Cricket to keep the interest level’s high though that is bound to be a very difficult and a challenging task for any home team pitted against teams of equal strength. Therefore team managers and curators will have to take a fine line approach if this is to happen though I doubt it very much. One way of overcoming this would be to have a completely independent curator who would prepare pitches with good cricket in mind and not be host biased. But then if the results become negative what would you want to do? Sack the curator or resort to the old method of having pitches to suit you?

I think it will be the latter. Despite all the rhetoric of positive cricket the bottom line is all about playing to your advantage as there are no friends inside the boundary and teams are in no mould be generous when you are in the serious game of Test cricket. Personally I don’t condone preparing similar pitches to the SSC for any game as it will not help cricket or cricketers to move forward, but one need’s to be alive to reality and understand the motives of such preparations which are bound to surface from time to time.

* Roshan Abeysinghe is a leading cricket promoter and an international cricket commentator

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