With the ICC cricket committee set to meet in March to discuss whether World Test Championship matches should be four-day affairs from 2023 onwards, debate has raged across the world on the motives and implications behind the idea.
On the latest Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast, Wisden Cricket Monthly editor-in-chief Phil Walker, WCM magazine editor Jo Harman, regular host Yas Rana and Wisden writer Ben Gardner shared their views on the subject. Here’s a little taster of their discussion.
PW: The question is how much energy there will be to push this through. Personally, I have mixed feelings on it. I’m not emotionally tied to five-day cricket. I can see the arguments for four-day cricket in the modern game. As an overriding thought, I think to make it mandatory four-day cricket without properly trialling this idea in big games over the next two years or so – you can’t reverse it, you can’t go back.
This is a fundamental, existential moment for the Test-match game. If we were were to blunder into it without due consideration and without properly trialling these ideas, in big fixtures as well, then I think we’re playing havoc with the most precious thing we’ve got.
YR: I think a lot of the arguments for five-day Test cricket don’t really stand if you scrutinise them at all. Also, we have a very, very different perspective watching our cricket in England, where we sell out most days of Test cricket.
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If you look outside the ‘big three’ [England, Australia and India], loads of Test series are only two-match series, and one of the arguments for four-day Test matches is that it’s more financially sustainable to have more of them. So if you’re really, really worried about the long-term future of Test cricket, you can see the argument for having more four-day Tests.
JH: For me that’s the only reason that stacks up. I’d be really interested to see what the numbers are – on what savings boards would make from having four-day Tests rather than five-day Tests, and the damage that five-day Test matches are doing to other nations. As it stands, it’s negotiable if you want to have four-day Tests; if both boards agree, that works for me.
I don’t feel particularly wedded traditionally to five-day Tests. But I want that flexibility there – to make it mandatory makes no sense. We’ve had a pretty good example today of a match that could have been ruined if it was a four-day Test rather than a five-day Test. Obviously teams would play differently and we can’t say exactly how it would have played out, but there’s a good chance we wouldn’t have had enough overs to make the game what it was today.
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One of the arguments I’ve seen is that it makes Test cricket more appealing to fans. I just don’t buy that at all. I don’t really see how that stacks up. Rob Key said he hasn’t heard anyone who doesn’t like Test cricket who would like it if was four days rather than five and I completely agree with that point of view.
BG: I don’t really buy it from a philosophical point of view, that ‘now it’s four days – now it’s for me’. But I think you would actually get more finishes like today if you played four-day Tests as the norm, rather than five-day Tests. So few Tests go this late on day five. You would get more teams having to do things creatively to get a win or battling late on day four to get a win.
Listen to the full debate below. Also available on Spotify and the Podcast app.
