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Is Test cricket coming to an end?
DEAR EDITOR,
The writing is on the wall. It seems as if soon or later – maybe sooner than later – Test cricket will be a game of the past. Reason being – financial – the five-day games do not attract the crowds or TV rights. The latest is that the two Tests, three ODIs and One Twenty/20 game between Sri Lanka and West Indies were cancelled and replaced by a ODI triangular series (West Indies, Sri Lanka and India) now underway in the Caribbean.
It is extremely difficult these days to attract sponsors for Test cricket since viewers and spectators prefer the shorter versions of the game. I recall an interview I did with Sam Loxton, a member of Sir Donald Bradman’s ‘invincibles’, a few years ago in Queensland, who said that the Twenty/20 game was not cricket, and former Windies speedster Michael Holding endorsing the then 85-year-old’s statement. Loxton has since died and Holding now has a different view of the shortest version of the game, saying that it is lucrative to both the players and Cricket Associations.
Moreover, there is strong evidence that the Twenty 20 games are attracting huge sponsors, since the West Indies Cricket Board has already sold the rights for its annual Twenty20 to the little known Verus International organization under the banner of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL). Since then, Digicel, the former sponsor of West Indies cricket, took a lead role preparing for the July 28 – August 6 tournament, and the event is currently sponsored by Limacol and officially titled the Limacol CPL.
I am of the view that the now disgraced Allen Stanford was the man who paved the way for the T 20 cricket to be given international organization. The Texan who lived and invested tens of millions of dollars in various business ventures in Antigua, spent large sums of money in promoting T20, bringing it in line with baseball. He organized competitions among 22 countries and paid large prize money etc. He also spent millions of dollars in improving facilities between Bermuda and Guyana and had 10 legends such as Sir Everton Weekes, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Vivian Richards, and others on his payroll for years to promote the game.
The players are now earning big bucks because of the tremendous sponsorship. Tony Cozier, the famous commentator, recently indicated that the present triangular series is being competed for the Celkon Mobile Cup, the name of an Indian manufacturer of mobile phones. It and a number of other Indian products and services’ names are unheard of in the Caribbean, but the products are on the advertising boards in grounds in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and moreover, the matches are broadcast live on television to India and several other countries in the world. What is new also is that the games are covered in English and Hindi.
Cricket fans in the region and the world over now prefer ODI and T20 rather than the five-day test matches.
Oscar Ramjeet
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