England have just posted a huge total in their first innings against Pakistan in Multan.
As I write this, Chris Woakes has just removed Abdullah Shafique for a Diamond Duck and gone dot, four in the next two deliveries.
This does somewhat make me question the tone of what I am about to write! For the last couple of days we have watched a fairly lifeless wicket, a batters paradise provide nothing but the cricketing version of the Highway To Hell for the bowling side.
Whilst I like so many others have relished seeing Root and Brook post personal best scores, break records and show why, in Root’s case, he will be remembered as an all time great and why for Brook, this could be the innings that elevates him to World Class in the eyes of many. It does though bring up the age old question of the appeal and draw of Test Cricket. Is this match really going to engage the next generation of fan? Is there armchair sports fan who has a burgeoning but not definite interest in cricket going to stay tuned in, possibly, possibly not.
I am certainly not saying that the only Test Matches worth playing are those in which we have a 5 day thriller or a 3 day romp over the finish line as we have become accustomed to in the Bazball era, but when you can clearly see the players hiding from wanting to take the ball to protect their figures and not go through the physical pain of bowling in such heavy sawdust (I am looking at you Shaheen Shah Afridi – we saw you lurking at the boundary edge trying to avoid eye contact with your skipper), you have to ask is it worth it?
Test Match Special’s Agnew & Finn spent a moment reflecting on just this and comapring it to the infamous match at the Sir Viv Richards stadium where the game was clearly unplayable. The injuries that followed that and so many other games where the bowling sides suffer in the field for so long, the wicket offering nothing in return for your efforts, just hoping that it is in your over that the tiredness of the batters becomes overhwelming and they give up their wicket. It can’t be any fun for them.
For the batters, racking up the runs, carting it round the ground and boosting your average… what is not to like! That is until it is your turn again to stand in the field for two days whilst the oppositon get their revenge.
Maybe that is just it, it is more of a game to get the muscles that little bit sorer in your opponent, it is for you to have some psychological grip on them for the second test and I should enjoy it just for that alone. But I can’t honestly say I have been gripped by this test. Mammoth innings, I can take it or leave it.
I am and I think I always will be a devotee of Test Cricket, which, for me, is the only real format of cricket, with T20 and The Hundred being what I would call show business. It’s true the other forms of cricket pull in the crowds and get people to come and enjoy the game, which they may have dismissed without these formats, as state schools don’t appear to play cricket any more, not least proper cricket on grass, with school teams competing for their borough, town or schools county championship a distant memory for some and alien to the younger generations.
However, after watching the first three days of the current Test Match in Multan, Pakistan I could not help but agree with the comments of the post above. I’m not sure I would pay a considerable amount of money, assuming the costs are roughly the same across the world, to watch batsman plunder a toiling bowling attack on a docile, batsman friendly wicket, running up big scores without the slightest chance of a wicket falling.
For three days there was no contest between bat and ball but how quickly things changed once England declared. Although Pakistan do not have a good record in their second innings of late I thought a result was beyond both teams and I didn’t bother even looking at the scoreboard at all on day 4 as I had made up my mind the match would be drawn, but what a finish.
It is what makes Test Cricket the only real form of the game.