2 teams embarked on Test tours with the promises of winning (but hopes of managing respectable performances one suspects). Both went from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere diagonally! England to Australia and India to SA.
England were being led by a new captain (one of the best batsmen in the world) , had performed well against teams at home and were generally in good form. It looked like the 5 Test Ashes series in Australia would be closely fought even though eventually England might just lose. But lose they did and how! Australia won 4-0 (instead of 5-0) only because the 4th Test was played on a flat pitch. Several factors contributed to England eventually losing, including the absence of sufficient practice in Australia.
And now lets come to India. India reached SA with the best chance in the past 25 years , of winning a test series. India bowled well, but batted bad (to be fair both teams batted bad), with the net result that SA won by 73 runs. A margin of 73 runs when chasing 209 is like a margin of 140 when chasing 400! So, it was a big defeat no doubt. While there were debates on the batting line up - mainly Rahane being dropped for Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul being dropped for Dhawan, the truth was that India wet to SA without ANY practice games! India still can (and will) learn from the mistakes of the first test, but the momentum is lost.
Playing test matches in alien conditions is always tough , no wonder then that the WI teams of the 80's and the Aussie teams at the start of this century, that could win matches consistently when touring, were considered great! In those days the gap between teams used to be huge, teams like India , Pak and even NewZeland didn't have the kind of matchwinners that most teams today do. So, touring teams could hope to win! These days, it is very very different. As Bangladesh has shown recently (and hopefully Afghanistan and Ireland will in the near future), teams are able to bridge the talent gap through training and coaching. Winning outside one's country is getting more and more difficult.
So, how does one make test matches a lot lot more interesting.
1. Let the touring team always have the toss advantage - so, based on the history of the ground (favoring batting first or fielding) and depending on the relative strength/weakness of their team, they can decide what to do first and deny the home team that advantage.
2. The toss doesn't always offer an advantage - Joe Root found that out during the Ashes this year. So, maybe another way is to use drop pitches that are picked up at random by the ICC. The weather cannot be controlled, but maybe the pitches can be randomised enough!
3. This one is tough - insisting on time for atleast 3 practice matches would be a great idea, but no one will want to 'WASTE' time on these. So, in the tradition of county cricket, cricket boards should keep sending players to play in the leagues of foreign countries - then, English players will get acclimatized to Australia, India to SA, the Aussies to India etc. etc. Imagine Steven Smith playing Ranji cricket for Mumbai! Maybe it can be sweetened with the permission to play that country's T20 league without any strings attached!
4. How about test matches on neutral venues? Imagine the Ashes in India - or an India versus SL test series in Jamaica! (There might hardly be any spectators, but I guess the cricket boards are too busy chasing TV rights to bother about ticket playing spectators). Then, no one will know the weather or the pitch and the results will be that much more sweet!
Wondering what else might work!
Edit (Jan 12, 2018) : A nice write-up on cricinfo echoing my sentiments on practice matches : http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/22039162/why-need-tough-first-class-matches-the-ashes
England were being led by a new captain (one of the best batsmen in the world) , had performed well against teams at home and were generally in good form. It looked like the 5 Test Ashes series in Australia would be closely fought even though eventually England might just lose. But lose they did and how! Australia won 4-0 (instead of 5-0) only because the 4th Test was played on a flat pitch. Several factors contributed to England eventually losing, including the absence of sufficient practice in Australia.
And now lets come to India. India reached SA with the best chance in the past 25 years , of winning a test series. India bowled well, but batted bad (to be fair both teams batted bad), with the net result that SA won by 73 runs. A margin of 73 runs when chasing 209 is like a margin of 140 when chasing 400! So, it was a big defeat no doubt. While there were debates on the batting line up - mainly Rahane being dropped for Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul being dropped for Dhawan, the truth was that India wet to SA without ANY practice games! India still can (and will) learn from the mistakes of the first test, but the momentum is lost.
Playing test matches in alien conditions is always tough , no wonder then that the WI teams of the 80's and the Aussie teams at the start of this century, that could win matches consistently when touring, were considered great! In those days the gap between teams used to be huge, teams like India , Pak and even NewZeland didn't have the kind of matchwinners that most teams today do. So, touring teams could hope to win! These days, it is very very different. As Bangladesh has shown recently (and hopefully Afghanistan and Ireland will in the near future), teams are able to bridge the talent gap through training and coaching. Winning outside one's country is getting more and more difficult.
So, how does one make test matches a lot lot more interesting.
1. Let the touring team always have the toss advantage - so, based on the history of the ground (favoring batting first or fielding) and depending on the relative strength/weakness of their team, they can decide what to do first and deny the home team that advantage.
2. The toss doesn't always offer an advantage - Joe Root found that out during the Ashes this year. So, maybe another way is to use drop pitches that are picked up at random by the ICC. The weather cannot be controlled, but maybe the pitches can be randomised enough!
3. This one is tough - insisting on time for atleast 3 practice matches would be a great idea, but no one will want to 'WASTE' time on these. So, in the tradition of county cricket, cricket boards should keep sending players to play in the leagues of foreign countries - then, English players will get acclimatized to Australia, India to SA, the Aussies to India etc. etc. Imagine Steven Smith playing Ranji cricket for Mumbai! Maybe it can be sweetened with the permission to play that country's T20 league without any strings attached!
4. How about test matches on neutral venues? Imagine the Ashes in India - or an India versus SL test series in Jamaica! (There might hardly be any spectators, but I guess the cricket boards are too busy chasing TV rights to bother about ticket playing spectators). Then, no one will know the weather or the pitch and the results will be that much more sweet!
Wondering what else might work!
Edit (Jan 12, 2018) : A nice write-up on cricinfo echoing my sentiments on practice matches : http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/22039162/why-need-tough-first-class-matches-the-ashes
No comments:
Post a Comment