As the powerful storm surge of 20/20 cricket continues to threaten all in its path, events in Mohali last week came as a timely intervention for the traditional game.
India’s annihilation of Australia by 320 runs, embellished by Sachin Tendulkar’s march past Brian Lara’s run-scoring record, was a tonic for the waning appeal of Test cricket in a land where the newest, shortest format has rapidly caught the imagination of the largest and most passionate of publics.
Australia are now India’s fiercest rivals, even above Pakistan. Tendulkar has been their cricketing god since he was a teenager.
The confluence of such accomplishments by team and individual and their stimulating impact on the nation as a whole, might just have reminded administrators spellbound by the popularity of, and profits from, 20/20 cricket of what the International Cricket Council (ICC) terms “the primacy of Test cricket.”
Of late, all the buzz has been around the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Indian Cricket League (ICL) and the Stanford 20/20 and the money that cricketers can now earn but only previously spoke of in jealous reference to other high-paid sports. Now, through one match and one record, Tests are again attracting attention.
Two matches remain in the series and it is crucial that the momentum be maintained.
Nearly 50 years ago, Test cricket was similarly at risk, undermined by the tedium of meaningless draws, mainly instigated by England.
It took the deliberate policy of captains Richie Benaud of Australia and Frank Worrell of the West Indies through the thrilling 1960-61 series in Australia, with its tied Test and its riveting climax, to revive it. Even if the circumstances are different, India and Australia can now perform a similar function on its behalf.
Whatever else, the concern is that a surfeit of 20/20 tournaments – and a new one seems to be planned every week – will have the self-defeating effect of damaging all forms of the game. The trick is to find the correct balance to accommodate them all, a truth that seemingly escapes those who determine such things.
They would all do worse than to heed the thoughts of Daren Ganga, the Trinidad and Tobago captain and as smart a cricketer as they come.
He knows what it is to lose, and win, US$1 million in a single 20/20 match (as his team did in the two regional Stanford tournaments to date) and also to play Tests for a relative pittance.
He again leads Trinidad and Tobago at the Stanford Cricket Ground on Monday against Middlesex, the England champions, for a US$400,000 purse.
“Really and truly, this (20/20) is not really a benchmark for judging players. Test cricket is the ultimate,” he told Colin Croft in a BBC interview on Friday.
“There will be a point in time when a lot of people are going to get jaded over this version of the game and realise that it doesn’t show the true colours of a cricketer”.
“It’s going to taper off at some stage, I don’t know when, but I think that…most of the interest created by 20/20 cricket is going to die out and we’ll revert to Test cricket once again because it is the real test of a cricketer.”
Ganga’s assertion that 20/20 is no place to properly judge players is a self-evident truth. Confined to 20 overs, Tendulkar’s successor could never amass 12,000 runs, Lara’s compile 400 or Muralitheran’s top 700 wickets. Nor, for that matter, could one team crush another by 320 runs.
All the same, his are bold predictions at a time when there is general despair that 20/20 is strangling Test cricket to a slow death.
Ganga is not irrational enough to dismiss the 20/20 format as an irrelevance or an abomination, as others have done. What he seeks is a proper balance between the two, conceding that one cannot exist without the other.
“We need to have proper structures that make players understand (the issue),” he said.
“Right now the signals are not sending the right messages to young cricketers.”
“If you tell me you can commit yourself to two weeks of cricket and win US$1 million whereas you commit yourself to four or five months (on an international tour) for a purse of US$5,000, it doesn’t make sense at all,” he added. Such disparities would clearly point youngsters towards the short, rather than the long, version “because they are motivated by the money”.
“What needs to happen is more balance in the monetary rewards that come with the four-day game and with Test cricket,” he stated.
He maintained that to focus exclusively on 20 overs would clearly “kill the potential” of a young cricketer and spoiling his chances of playing the longer version.
He pointed out that, instead of trying to concentrate and bat for four hours or an entire day, batsmen would be simply content to bat a few overs and try to score 50.
His point is that when the 20/20 fads begins to fade, as he is adamant it will, and Test cricket is restored to its rightful place, the future Tendulkars and Laras would not be prepared for it.
For the time being, he has now turned his attention to his assignment here and the possibility of adding US$400,000 to the US$1.5 million he and his players have already taken off Sir Allen Stanford.
