Time for ICC to bring back women's Test cricket
For cricket writers and commentators, Test match cricket has been a perennially endangered species. The death of Test match cricket is supposed to end life as we know it and bring forth doom and gloom in the world of cricket. We discuss this in a year in which a five-Test Pataudi Trophy and an Ashes series is supposed to take place along with the ICC World Test Championship final at Lord's. So clearly, the doomsday proponents have been proved wrong thus far.
However, there might be some truth in this 'dying' of Test match cricket. If we broaden our horizons to study the ‘overlooked’ cricket i.e., the women’s game, we can see that Test match cricket is perhaps in the final stages of its existence.
Presently, Test matches are restricted to one-off four-day encounters in the multi-format Ashes, the last of which took place in 2019. For the rest, the wait has not just been long, it has been forever. Teams like India, New Zealand, South Africa etc. have been stuck in a limbo where the last Test matches took place ages ago. India last featured in a Test match in 2014, while New Zealand, West Indies last played the game in 2004. Teams like Pakistan and Sri Lanka have played only three and one Test match respectively in their cricketing history.
One often talks about the way Test match cricket gets affected in this era of T20 cricket, in terms of player skills and viewers’ preferences. Now imagine, you’ve had a generation of players who grew up only by featuring in the limited-overs format and tournaments.
There is an obvious question of economic feasibility of the format in terms of viewership and advertising, but should that become a reason to not push the format at all?
ICC too has looked at improving the status of women's cricket
There has been a rise of interest in women’s cricket in recent years. Partially brought on by the rise of T20 cricket, which has attracted newer viewers to the game and partially by efforts of the cricketing boards.
The introduction of the Women’s BBL in Australia, Women’s Cricket Super League in England and Women’s T20 Challenge, which takes place during the IPL in India have all played a big part in this growing interest.
ICC has worked towards improving the game to a large extent as well.
If one seeks to look at further proof, they need not go further than looking at the record-breaking World T20 final of last year at the MCG. The story behind attaining the unreal number of 86,174 was told in the Amazon Prime Documentary ‘The Record’, which showcased the efforts it took for the tournament organizers to pull off this miracle.
At one point, there were questions raised by players themselves, since they were used to the idea of playing in front of crowds between 5000 to 15,000, but even so the finals received an unprecedented coverage and the tournament was deemed a massive success.
There is no reason that a way cannot be found to fit Test cricket into the scheme of things. The players seem to be all for it, as Indian Keeper Sushma Varma told Sportskeeda in an exclusive chat last year.
Now, the question that remains with us is the manner in which this can be implemented. The answer to that was given during the ICC’s '100% innovations session’ hosted by Australian Commentator Mel Jones which also featured New Zealand’s Sophie Devine and India’s Jemimah Rodrigues.
During a segment called ‘New Formats and Competitions’ where several innovations which can be brought in by ICC like International T10, Champions League etc. were discussed, there were also talks of including the option of a multi-format series. This idea was given a big thumbs-up by Jemimah Rodrigues.
“Definitely I would love to play one. Whenever, we get the opportunity to watch the Ashes, and the kind of matches they have… and they get to play tests, T20 and ODI. Sometimes I get a bit jealous when they get to play Test cricket because it’s been a long time since India has played a Test match. Would definitely be excited to look at the multi-format series and hopefully, we have that soon," Jemimah said.
Thus, a multi-format series can prove to be an efficient way of bring ‘Tests’ back to the women’s game, all it needs is a vision and strong push by the ICC.