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There was a time when cricket was desperate for Test matches to speed up and provide more entertainment.
Take the period between 1969 and 1985, when almost half of all matches in the ultimate form of the game lasted five days and finished, to the bemusement of those not invested in the intricacies of Test cricket, in stalemate.
During those 16 years of extreme negativity, 43.1 per cent of Tests ended in draws but in the last five years, that has dropped to 8.2 per cent. In this era of Twenty20 cricket and instant thrills, bore draws are virtually a thing of the past.
Good news? Well, yes, when Tests are played out over their full duration, or in four days, with a positive conclusion. England’s home series against India last summer, when all five Tests went to a fifth day but only one, at Old Trafford, finished in a draw, was viewed as a modern classic of its kind. But that 2-2 drawn series is very much an outlier.
Now, in terms of the number of overs, the average Test finishes in little more than three days and two-day Tests, once an extreme rarity, have become commonplace.
Between the end of the Second World War and the turn of the millennium, no Tests ended by the close of the second day. But in the last 25 years — starting with what was considered at the time the madness of England’s two-day defeat of West Indies at Headingley in 2000 — 12 have been done and dusted on day two.
England captain Nasser Hussain (centre) congratulates bowler Darren Gough (back to camera and arms aloft) as West Indies collapse at Headingley in 2000 (Owen Humphreys/Getty Images)
One game was over almost as soon as it began: the Test between South Africa and India at one of the great Test grounds, Newlands in Cape Town, at the start of 2024 was completed in just 107 overs. That is barely more than a full day’s play.
For the first time in any series in the last 129 years, two of those truncated Tests have come in the biggest of them all — this year’s Ashes. And that is far too short, far too error-filled and far too financially ruinous to be sweet for the game’s health.
What is meant to be the ultimate ‘test’ of a player’s skills is being diluted like never before.
For one Ashes Test, the first of this year’s series in Perth, to be over on day two may be considered unfortunate. For a second, the iconic Boxing Day game in Melbourne, to end similarly is careless in the extreme and took the gloss off England’s first win in any Test in Australia for 15 years. Even England captain Ben Stokes, speaking to journalists after the win at the MCG, said it was “not ideal”.
“These two-day finishes in the Ashes have been bad for Test cricket,” Stuart Law, who has seen it all as a player for Australia, in both Australian and English domestic cricket, then as a coach around the world, tells The Athletic.
“I’ve heard the England team saying, ‘We’re entertainers and we’re playing entertaining cricket’, but I don’t think a two-day Test is entertaining. It’s disgraceful.
“It’s meant to be a test of courage, skill and mental toughness but if it’s over in two days, it’s completely unsatisfactory. I’m not excusing Australia because they haven’t batted well, bar in one match, so the attitude and defining messages that make someone a great Test player are not being adhered to anymore. They just want to go out and tee off.”
Australia’s Travis Head hits out on day two at the MCG (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
The impatience of a generation of cricketers and fans raised on a diet of instant T20 cricket is certainly a factor, as are the mentalities and the techniques of typical modern players.
Then there is the quality of pitches, which, with points on offer for positive results going towards a World Test Championship introduced in 2019, are not being prepared with longevity in mind.
When those pitches offer bowlers too much assistance, as at the MCG, lost revenue — including refunds to more than 90,000 ticket holders on day three — runs into millions of dollars. The curator responsible for the strip, Matt Page, was pilloried in public and paraded in front of the press to express his “state of shock”.
“We could talk for hours about the reasons for all this,” says Law.
“One of the biggest factors in games being shorter is that the best players don’t play enough multi-day cricket, so they are not attuned to the length a good Test takes.
“Yes, the obvious factor behind that is the proliferation of T20 cricket and all the money that comes with it. When young players see guys from the IPL (the Indian Premier League, the most lucrative tournament in the world) driving around in A$300,000 (£150,000; $200,000) motor cars while guys playing Sheffield Shield cricket (the Australian domestic competition) drive a beat-up old Ford Falcon, they think: ‘Do I want to play Test cricket? Do I want to wait that long to make it? Is it better to go down the T20 route for five years or slug it out for 15?’.
“It comes down to personal preference, but the guys who chase the cash early are not really in it for the love of the game. They’re in it to make as much money as they can as quickly as they can. I’ve got no issue with players who want to do that. That’s the way the world game has gone. But don’t say Test cricket is ‘the ultimate’ if you don’t really mean it.
“If you talk that sort of talk, you have to walk the walk and put the hard yards in.”
Stuart Law during a stint as head coach of the English county, Middlesex, in 2019 (Harry Trump/Getty Images)
Law, who coached the United States to their famous victory over Pakistan in the Twenty20 World Cup in Dallas in 2024 and is now overseeing Nepal as they prepare for February’s T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka, also blames modern batting techniques and even sport science for fast-forwarding Test cricket.
“Sports science was brought in to reduce injuries to fast bowlers, but it hasn’t worked,” he says. “It stops players playing and when they do play they’re nowhere near ready to take on the rigours of Test cricket.
“They try to keep bowlers healthy to play in a series and then they’re injured in the second game because they haven’t played enough. Yet people are still buying into this.
“There are training methods that don’t help Test standards, too, like the no-feet batting drill (a training routine popular among modern players). Test cricket is all about moving your feet and, particularly in Australia, you have to be light on your feet, like a boxer.
England’s Ben Duckett digests his dismissal in Adelaide. His feet have not moved from his stance (Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
“The ball reacts at pace and with bounce, and you have to be ready to ride it. Hitting balls without moving your feet is setting yourself up to fail at Test level.
“It has been used by a lot of very good players, including (former Australia captain) Ricky Ponting, but he was at a different stage of his career. When you’re a kid trying to break into first-class cricket and you’re doing the no-feet drill, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. You’re giving yourself a handicap before you even make it.”
Law also believes a modern ball-throwing device used by coaches in practice — known as ‘the dog stick’, or ‘wanger’ in Australia — has not helped.
“Batting standards have gone down because of the dog stick,” he says. “You don’t get the cues from the ball being released by the bowler. You’re told to watch the ball out of the hand when you’re growing up, but when you’re throwing with the dog stick, your hand is on the handle and the ball is two feet above that. It’s artificial.
“It saves the coach’s shoulder and batters can get volume, but it’s not the same. Even with throw-downs, the ball is released from the hand. There’s no substitute for facing bowlers.”
England’s coach Brendan McCullum uses a dog stick in the nets (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
Law, who also coached Middlesex in the County Championship, says the structure of the domestic game does not help the England Test team. The bulk of English first-class cricket is played in early and late summer to allow the Hundred-ball competition to dominate the prime month of August.
“You’re setting young batters up to fail and you could blow up your bowlers in the first two months of the season because you’re playing eight Championship games in eight weeks,” says Law. “And that’s to fit the Hundred in, which is ludicrous.
“Why not play the 50-over stuff first to get the boys up and running and then, when summer hits and the wickets dry up, you should play your Championship cricket? That would give batters a chance to actually get in a decent run of form. Spinners would be widely used in longer formats then, too, which is what England are lacking at the moment.”
The poor quality of Test pitches may be the biggest issue of them all, but Law does not want to condemn the much-maligned Page, who was originally appointed in Melbourne to provide life to the pitches but who went too far on Boxing Day.
“In Melbourne, Australia wanted a pitch that did a bit more because they felt England’s ‘Bazball’ approach doesn’t survive on anything other than low, slow, flat wickets,” says Law.
“This pitch was designed that way. The poor curator is copping it but it shouldn’t be held against him. I’m sure there was someone saying, ‘Well, we’ve got to have a bit of pace and bounce and a bit of sideways movement would be helpful’.
“It’s a tough job. I used to sit with curators and discuss what it takes to make a pitch last five days and they have to take into account weather forecasts for days three, four and five. They do want it to last a long time and Page just got it wrong this time.
“It has become all about the power game and if the ball is doing a bit it’s, ‘Let’s get as many as we can before we get out’, rather than, ‘OK, this is going to be tough for the first four hours but let’s knuckle down and get through it’. You don’t see teams doing that anymore. They just try to bully their way out of it and if it comes off, it looks great. If it doesn’t, you’re all out 120 and behind the eight ball.”
The modern player has adopted an attack-first approach (Martin Keep/AFP via Getty Images)
The trend for shorter games does not show any sign of changing but for Law, it is not all doom and gloom.
“The Ashes rivalry will go on forever because the interest is as high as ever,” he adds. “You don’t have to change the format to garner more interest when more than 90,000 people turn up in successive days in Melbourne. And, in England, almost every Test is at full capacity for at least the first three days.
“We need the various boards to get together and say pitches have to be a certain standard while skill and fitness levels need to be high enough to be sustained over the longer game — and that means four or five days rather than two or three.”