Test cricket is hard. The clue is in the name.
It challenges physically, mentally and psychologically. It challenges individuals to act as a team, and teams to trust individuals.
The very act of bowling a single ball at high speed takes years of technical and physical concentration. To do that 120 or more times a day in heat and humidity taxes body and soul.
Scott Boland claims the wicket of Sarel Ervee as South Africa crumble, yet again, at the MCG.Credit:Chris Hopkins
Batting against high-velocity deliveries or high spin requires supernatural reactions that are trained meticulously. To sprint up and down the 22 yards 200 times is exhausting.
Bowling all day with little success and no luck pushes will. Not making runs in losing teams can be depressing. Batsmen have been known to be violently ill BEFORE going to the crease; bowlers most likely at the end of an extensive day.
Twenty20 cricket is not physically hard; it takes an hour and a quarter to get through an innings. Test match warm-ups take longer. Batters dance, flail, scoop and ramp – the bowlers use pace off, knuckle balls and full tosses. They even aim as wide of the stumps as they can get away with. The MCC coaching manual is not much use in the modern iteration, but please do not let T20 players tell you that the game has anywhere near the challenges of Test cricket over the course of a match or the length of a career.
T20 cricket pays handsomely; Test cricket not so much.
The Australian men’s Test team has completely outplayed both their opponents this summer. It is a very good team that looks to be getting better with each outing, albeit with the caveat being the quality of the West Indies and South Africa this summer.
The West Indies are a pale imitation of their former glory.Credit:Getty
There is a lengthy thesis waiting to be written by a sporting-minded academic on the demise of Caribbean quality since their heyday of the 1980s and the heights of Calypso cricket in the 1960s. Their generational domination under Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards and then Richie Richardson was underpinned by an astonishing depth of talent. Injuries and form lapses could not diminish their power and, of course, there was no competing format or competition aside from the mid-1980s rebel tours to South Africa to suck away the understudies.
Talent emerged rather than being produced. Since the end of apartheid South Africa have presented some very strong and consistent sporting sides but very weak sporting administration. An almost bankrupt SA cricket has sold the farm to the T20 game – mostly Indian money – in order to refloat the finances. A wise move given the alternatives, but the consequences for their Test cricket were clearly on show during the past few weeks. The post-apartheid government policy of affirmative action, where team representation must cover all racial groups, creates a further distortion to playing strength while righting some historical wrongs.
The Proteas look inexperienced at the five-day game and are bereft of wicket-taking strategies apart from bowling the unplayable (which they have done a couple of times) or waiting for Australia to make mistakes. Australia have rarely obliged.
Faf du Plessis has been his best for the Perth Scorchers while his countrymen were battling away at the Gabba, MCG and SCG.Credit:Getty
Captain Dean Elgar looks haggard and has lost the fight that generally accompanies his sound technique. The bowlers’ effort comes across as desultory; perhaps their minds are on the Rand available when they get home.
While Temba Bavuma battled Pat Cummins, Scott Boland, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon and Cameron Green at the MCG, ex-captain Faf du Plessis slogged Andrew Tye, Peter Hatzoglou and Jason Behrendorff in Perth wearing a Scorchers jumper.
South Africa not only miss the runs and wickets of their senior players who take the T20 paychecks, they miss the influence and lessons that these people bring to the dressing room.
The Proteas and the Windies seemed to have gone backwards during the southern summer. It is one thing to lose a match; it is a sporting felony to go on making the same mistakes over and over.
More than 30 elite South African players are contracted to T20 leagues throughout the world. There is a serious living to be made around the world reverse-sweeping the white ball, and those who choose to pay the mortgage and feed the family are not to be begrudged. Green is fortunate that Cricket Australia allow participation in the IPL when they are within their contractual rights to disallow his No Objection Certificate (NOC).
Sunil Narine in action for Surrey in the T20 Blast in England last year. His career is a cautinary tale for cricket administrators.Credit:Getty
The Windies’ greasy pole to Test obscurity could be best summed up by the career of Sunil Narine. The finger-flicking Trinidadian made his one-day international debut in December 2011, closely followed by a Test debut six months later. His bowling was difficult to read, comprised of a faster than usual pace and a tricky combination of orthodox off-breaks and Jack Iverson-style middle-finger wrong’uns. Today, the term “carrom ball” is popular. He is a handy bat as well, and a long career commanding West Indian victories looked certain. He played six Tests in the next 18 months – then the IPL came knocking.
The Kolkata Knight Riders offered him near $1 million a season, and he never played another Test. He has since played for an extensive list of T20 franchise teams from the Lahore Qalandars to the Sydney Sixers. He is still contracted to the Knight Riders.
The West Indies Cricket Board cannot afford to pay him anywhere near what the 20-over teams can. Andre Russell, Dwayne Bravo, Kieron Pollard, Nicholas Pooran et al are in the same canoe.
Australia are lucky that the Test players are well paid and often made available for T20 cricket, and that the Sheffield Shield plays a significant role in developing those Test cricketers. They have their cake and eat it, too, but this needs to be protected at all costs.
The Caribbean Premier League attempts to redress the dollar inequities, and the new SA20 League may do likewise, but unless these nations invest some of the new money into domestic three- or four-day cricket then their Test match status is unlikely to change. The Windies through those golden years failed to reinvest in facilities and coaches; the pathway to the top started at the beach and finished on the reefs.
Test cricket is hard, and the remuneration does not match the simpler, the physically less taxing white-ball game. Why wouldn’t hard-hitting, finger-flicking, back-of-the-hand and slow-ball bowling quick men take the road most trampled? A no-brainer, no less.
If Test cricket is to be funded by T20, then so be it. But can you imagine the cricket universe being solely inhabited by 20-over matches?
Cricket needs Test cricket, and Test cricket needs all teams to be competitive.
The game is not easy. That’s exactly why it should be played.
