Earlier in the week Michael Vaughan returned to his view that Test matches should be 4 and not 5 days long. My thoughts on this are here:
The fact that the ICC which runs cricket globally is looking at the future of the Test format from 2023 underwrites the discussion and it must be said that most who have commented are at best not unequivocal supporters of a 4 day format.
Before that is reviewed however there is a more pressing matter: climate change.
The Guardian reports that the forthcoming Australia v New Zealand may be interrupted or even abandoned due to poor air quality. That of course is related to the dreadful bush fires in Australia. While they are hardly unknown the scale of them is, and it would take a very sceptical person not to see climate change as being at least a factor.
On a more mundane level Vaughan’s call for 4 day Tests has received a number of responses both in the Telegraph (where it appeared) and in the Murdoch Times.
Most commentators seem clear that the call for 4 day Tests is driven not by players but by administrators keen to fit even more cricket and money making opportunities into the year. As Mike Atherton notes in the Times the idea that shorter Tests would give players more rest is not likely to occur in reality.
The Telegraph reported that Surrey who are the most profitable English and Welsh County were also opposed to any change on the basis that the existing format brought in money that keeps the County game going.
On the plus side it is suggested that a 4 day Test would mean that matches could return to always starting on a Thursday although I’m not quite sure this fits with Administrators plans to shoehorn more games into the calendar. Neither am I sure that it really matters all that much now in a sporting world in general where games of some kind are going on more or less all the time somewhere.
Atherton in the Times makes the more profound point that 4 day games would destroy the fundamental nature of Test cricket (albeit an absolute requirement that a Test match be 5 days has only existed since 1979 it appears):
‘time after all, is the essence of Test cricket: it allows for the pitches to deteriorate and the game to take its natural, rather than artificial, course’
I agree. Ebb and flow is the very essence of Test cricket but not much valued by those who measure is profit and loss
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