Future of Cricket, One format may go
Recently at the opening day of the third test that England and Pakistan were playing at the Oval, there was a serious lack of spectators in the crowd. With a fourth test match yet to be played between the two sides there is a feeling among the organisers that they will not be able to fill the stands and there will be a lot of unsold tickets left over. This seems to be a problem with international and national scheduling in cricket at the moment. The governing bodies of the sport really need to get their act together and fix the situation before it spells the death of cricket.
This problem of too much cricket has only now started to affect the game at its highest levels and its most popular grounds. If both the Lord’s tests and the Oval’s tests are not selling out then that spells a real problem for the game. One has to wonder what the situation must be like for counties and at the club level of the game. It seems that too much cricket has drained out fans from the sport.
Schedulers need to strike a balance between matches that take place in a country and space them out so as to give the fans a bit of a breather. A similar situation was faced in 2009 and it seems the organisers have not learnt their lessons this year. Last year, Adam Gilchrist said that too much cricket all around the world was not only creating player fatigue but it was causing spectator burnout as well. His argument is that there are too many formats of the game being played too often in too many countries. With all the different formats of the game at the moment, test cricket, ODIs and T20, spectators have too much choice. Every week somewhere in the world either a test match series will be going on or a one day series or T20 league matches, it is becoming a little bit too much for people to deal with.
So what are the solutions to this problem at the moment? Well one way to deal with it is to simply reduce the amount of cricket played. If the situation can be corrected where less but more meaningful cricket is played, that might reverse the trend. The other way is a bit more controversial and does not go down too well with older, more purist cricketing fans. Chris Gayle mentioned this in an interview last year and he said what a lot of people were thinking about it but could not bring themselves to say out loud. He said that it may be time to bring an end to Test cricket. People who love the old format of the game usually take up arms and are ready to go to war at the slightest suggestion of this option.
Fans of test cricket consider it the purest form of the game, the original format and a classic not to be messed with. Well it seems that if something is not done soon then we might be forced to see the end of the Test format. It might be that a study needs to be commissioned in regards to spectator numbers at test matches and in ODIs and at T20 ones. It may come down to it that the format with the least amount of spectators will unfortunately have to get the cut.
This sudden increase in cricket over the years has come about because cricket went from being a sport played and loved by millions to also becoming big business all of a sudden. With the increased amounts of money being pumped into the sport from all sides, people started seeing more cricket matches all over the world. It may be that we are now at a saturation point and the upwards surge of cricket is levelling off and we will see a slight decline now and then it will stabilise to an acceptable level. It could be that this saturation point leads to the end of Test cricket or another format of the game. Maybe ODIs will see their death and the sport only has Tests and T20s left. That might satisfy the purists and also appeal to the new generation.
Whatever happens to the formats, the organisers need to strike a balance in the amount and quality of cricket that is played around the world. Maybe in a few years we will see a revolution in the sport and only those matches will be played that spectators want to watch.
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