Test cricket in the year 2020

Test cricket is cricket at its best. But it is also the game’s most conservative form, where change comes slowly, if at all. During the last few years, in which we have seen Twenty20 taking over the world, Test cricket has been suffering.

The choice between the quick excitement Twenty20 brings opposed to much slower motions of the five-day game is an easy one for most people. Test cricket is still widely regarded as the pinnacle of the game, but is also losing its appeal quickly.

As Simon Barnes wrote in the aftermatch of the first World Twenty20:

The ICC World Twenty20 was great: short, tight, thrilling. It is a good change, much better than the dreary old 50-over format. But it’s not such a good change if it becomes the ultimate form of the game and drives Test cricket into extinction.

Test cricket is the greatest form of the game, perhaps the greatest form of sport. Those of us who followed England and Australia in the summer of 2005 will always be certain of the primacy of Test cricket over other forms of the game. The loss of Test cricket at the expense of Twenty20 would be a catastrophe, even though Twenty20 is great.

All sports are constantly at war with themselves. The forces of tradition are forever fighting the drive for change. And all sports have changed radically in recent years; changed to make themselves more accessible, more popular, quicker, more convenient, easier on the eye. All sports have changed their rules, their scoring, to accommodate changing audiences, changing demands.

For Test cricket to survive and for cricket in general to expand beyond its traditional strongholds, the longest form of the game needs to change. Barnes again:

That, then, is the challenge to sport’s administrators: to make the right changes, and only the right changes. To accept that your sport has room for improvement, or at least adjustment, but also to accept that your sport has areas in which change should be resisted. The wisdom to know the difference between these things and the force to make the right changes while preserving what needs to be preserved – that is what administration is all about.

So what are the right changes? There is no blueprint off course, but I posted 5 steps to make Test cricket better and a bunch of follow-up posts on what I would like to see changed.

Also, I am really looking to hear from you. What are your thoughts? More Tests? More Test-playing countries? Day-night Tests? Four-day Test-matches?

In short; what should Test cricket look like in the year 2020?

Let me know, in the comments on this blog or at the special Uservoice forum. I want your feedback! :)