Test cricket is in poor health, isn't it? Think again

There's a southern summer of truly spectacular promise ahead in men's Test cricket. A match of five Border-Gavaskar seriesa three-Test New Zealand vs England tiltand a South Africa vs Sri Lanka seriesplayed entirely in South Africa's coastal locations (read: running), are already tantalizing prospects.

But add to that the masala of There are two World Test Championship final spots up for grabs and we're getting into the World Cup knockouts level of fun here.

If you're a T20 fan who grew up watching the final over finishes every other night, please don't laugh. A multi-month climax leading to a global trophy is about as great as Test fans have ever had. The World Test Championship is indebted for that. Whatever its shortcomings, at least in the third cycle it has evolved into a competition with no fewer than five teams still in the hunt for the final months.

Australia and India are at the top the table. But New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa are now locked in a meaningful battle, with all three picking up crucial wins in recent months, and all three thanks to home games that have the potential to take them to the final pilots.

At this point it would be easy to conclude that Test cricket is in fact in good health. Bangladesh recently whitewashed Pakistan. Pakistan has has just beaten England At home. New Zealand have achieved perhaps their greatest ever Test cricket performance, India's money laundering in India. We even had that earlier this year West Indies beat Australia at the Gabbawhich felt like a unique moment for West Indian cricket.

But take a look under the hood.

Let's take South Africa first, which was one of the big Test outfits just a decade ago. Just this year they sent a hugely depleted Test squad to New Zealand because those matches clashed with the SA20 tournament. They were quite destroyed. The fact that South Africa nevertheless has a chance to reach the WTC final is an achievement in itself. But even if they do appear at Lord's next June, they will have done so because they have not played a single three-Test series in this cycle.

Sri Lanka, meanwhile, despite all the board's shortcomings, has always valued Test cricket. Their The biggest problem is that their broadcasters tend to view Tests as such an inconvenience that home series are almost always two-Test affairs, and increasingly played exclusively in Galle. It makes more financial sense for broadcasters to keep their rigging in place at one venue during a series, while for cricket it also makes sense for Sri Lanka Cricket not to carry matches at the P Saravanamuttu Oval, where the team has in the past tends to lose. decade. Essentially you have a situation where five out of six home Tests in a WTC cycle are likely to be played in Galle.

New Zealand, meanwhile, has a unique disadvantage: the sun rises too early there. Where Tests played in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa can be consumed by the Indian market (it matters little which cricket is watched, it only matters how valuable the advertisements consumed are – this is already been the case for a long time), tests would have to go well past midnight in New Zealand and even break into Indian prime time. New Zealand is holding out for the time being and will play no fewer than two series of three tests in this cycle. But as far as Tests are concerned, their homecoming summer will only include the three matches against England.

Cricket West Indies, which has supported a commendable Test program (play approximately eight tests per year) has almost certainly had to deal with over the past ten years the biggest economic headwind of all the WTC teams, who are stuck in a time zone that may be even more inhospitable to South Asian audiences than New Zealand's, plus a small home market of their own.

Of the non-WTC countries, Zimbabwe plays sporadically, Ireland hardly gets an invitation and Afghanistan has no serious home venue.

As the graph above shows, the Big Three countries (India, England, Australia) have played more Tests than the others over this period. Sri Lanka are a close fourth, but this is arguably largely down to SLC's serious commitment to maintaining their Test program. Sri Lanka is the only country to have hosted all three countries of Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland during this period. These are all loss-making series for SLC.

If we split the WTC competition into the Big Three and the Next Six (South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, West Indies), the Next-Six boards are generally the only home series that offer serious earning opportunities that rival the Big Three. This is why three-test series have become increasingly rare over the past twenty years – boards would rather spend that time hosting limited edition games.

The following graph makes this clear. England play the longest series on average, but for both India and Australia almost two-thirds of their series were three-Test (or longer) affairs. That number is less than half for each Next Six team.

The ICC's best idea yet to address this imbalance has been set up a “Test Match Fund”.where the Big Three essentially redistribute a small percentage of their revenue to the remaining men's testing teams to subsidize those teams' testing programs. The The latest version of this whisper of a plan, which hasn't even really been discussed yet, includes a central pot of about $15 millionacross nine countries, with players guaranteed a match fee of $10,000 for testing.

But even this is already described as 'window dressing' by some boards, together with the former CEO of CWI. Johnny Grave, whose term expired last month, is among the most vocal. “I don't know if $15 million a year is going to make any difference,” Grave told talkSport Follows up podcast in August. “We pay our players $10,000, so I smiled a little bit when that came out in the press.”

In fact, the $15 million annual payout – which has yet to be approved – divided nine ways, is little better than the $1.25 million per year promised to smaller boards nine years ago; since then it has barely taken inflation into account. The Test Match Fund disbursement was halted very soon after it began, although at least two years' worth of payments were made.

Still, for context, the ICC's current four-year broadcast agreement with Star It is believed to be worth $3.5 billion worldwide. Of that amount, the BCCI, ECB and CA made annual payouts worth nearly $310 million combined (this equates to approximately 58% of the money paid out to full members each year). It is true that the Next Six countries also get more money in nominal terms than they used to, but because this is a sport, and because competition is crucial, the crucial figure is how much they get compared to other countries. The proposed Test Match Fund is worth less than 5% of the Big Three's income from the ICC alone (they have other sources of income).

If it is generally accepted that any sporting competition should have a semblance of equal opportunity. Equalization rules, such as substitutions or salary caps, are imposed on many T20 competitions, but cricket has largely chosen to make peace with massive imbalances in its oldest form. And if Test cricket naturally declines in the smaller countries, it is worth noting that many of those countries support the red-ball game at significant cost. South Africa in particular has felt the need to de-prioritize Test cricket in favor of their T20 competition. It is also worth noting here that no other league sees the de facto break that international cricket takes for the sake of the IPL.

We may have a wonderful few months of Test cricket ahead of us for the time being, thanks in no small part to a ground-breaking win in New Zealand. But it's worth asking: how long will it take before the vast commercial differences start to eat up the format?