The last couple of golden months for Test cricket have been characterised not just by the number of upsets and unforeseen results, but by the severity of many of them.
India, having just suffered their heaviest defeat on home soil to New Zealand, humiliated World Test champions Australia in the first Border/Gavaskar Test in Perth.
There have been too many shocks and surprises in recent weeks for the trend to be dismissed as a normal part of the vicissitudes of the five-day game. When the top six or seven teams in the world cannot only beat each other, but thrash anyone else, there is something going on. Does it bode well or poorly for the format?
Pessimists may be inclined to worry that the quality and depth of Test cricketers has declined and that there are too many “holes” and weaknesses in teams which can be exploited to extreme degrees. Optimists could easily suggest that the opposite may be the case.
Last year’s survey by the World Cricketers Association (WCA) revealed that more professional players than ever before had stipulated an IPL contract as their priority ahead of playing Test cricket for their countries.
It was a startling, headline-catching revelation which was “dressed” by the international players union to shine a light on the dangers that the proliferation of domestic T20 leagues around the world posed to the five-day game.
But there were mitigating factors, including the fact that more players from “minor” Test nations such as Ireland, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe were included in the survey and also that more professional women cricketers were polled than before.
In fairness, something would be “wrong” with any cricketers from those categories making Test cricket the prime focus with no means to make a living from it.
There are, however, a few awkward and even unmentionable truths about the rising number of cricketers from the major Test nations now turning away from the Test match dream and focusing their attention on making as much money as possible.
The first is that the WCA survey is anonymous. Very few players have anything but praise for the purest form of the game in public. Privately, they are not so squeamish about their own limitations.
More cricketers are recognising, and accepting, that they have neither the skill nor stamina to play Tests, even if they have the desire. For over a century, when Test cricket was the only level above the domestic game to which one could aspire, giving up on doing so too early in a career was a shaming admission of failure. But no longer. Now there are alternative courses and less judgment.
Now that there are fewer candidates for Test cricket one might suppose that the product would become poorer but the opposite is true. Rather than selectors having to sift through the records and form of hundreds of potentials, an efficient process of self-induced, Darwinian “natural selection” has reduced the size of the herd but strengthened it.
In SA the desire among players to play Test cricket has waned less than anywhere else. The current generation grew up watching one of the best teams — including Jacques Kallis, Hashim Amla, Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander, AB de Villiers and Graeme Smith — claiming the top ranking in 2012. Emulating that achievement now inspires men like Kagiso Rabada and Tristan Stubbs far more than the millions of dollars they will make, and have already made, in the T20 version.
Other teams are not so fortunate. The West Indies’ glory years were three decades ago before the current team members were born. It’s one thing knowing who Michael Holding and Viv Richards were, and are, quite another having watched them play and dreamed of copying them. Inspirational role models for aspirant youngsters are crucial to sustained success. Precedents exist throughout all sport.
Temba Bavuma and his team are fully aware of the potential significance, good and bad, of their next four Tests and the possibility of reaching the World Test Championship final and even becoming champions at Lord’s in June 2025.
The challenge begins in Durban on Wednesday with the first of a two-Test series against Sri Lanka followed by the second in Gqeberha a week later, and then another two against Pakistan over the festive season. Three out of four wins are required.
There is an awful lot to play for, beyond each individual result. It is easy to say: “Go out there and enjoy yourself”. A little harder to do when the shape of future generations could depend on it.
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