Monday Buzz: Test cricket dying, badly misses entertainers
MONDAY BUZZ: We have been saying it for years but it’s now actually happening. Test cricket is dying, writes PHIL ROTHFIELD.
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WE have been saying it for years but it’s now actually happening.
Test cricket is dying.
Throughout November and the summer months, it used to be compulsory viewing on Channel 9.
Or if we were driving anywhere in the car we were glued to Jimmy Maxwell and the ABC.
Ball by ball, session after session and day after day, the cricket was required listening.
When the one Test of the summer came to town we’d all go. We’d book our holidays around the Sydney Test.
Not anymore.
Cricket administrators have failed to adjust to the times.
We’ve been talking for 18 months about four-day Tests starting on a Thursday and finishing on a Sunday yet nothing has been done about it.
What other sporting event goes for five days and finishes on a day we’re all at work.
Pink-ball night cricket is a great innovation but it’s not enough.
The problem is not just the poor performances of the Australian team in the past few months.
It wasn’t that long ago we were the world’s No. 1 team. It’s more about the lack of personalities.
Waugh, Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist, Ponting and Hayden are long gone. All champions and all turnstile clickers.
Outside of Dave Warner, there is no one in the Australian cricket team to excite us enough to watch.
Love him or loathe him, we’d always watch Michael Clarke.
Steve Smith has been a wonderful contributor in recent years but he’s no crowd magnate.
He lacks flair and personality.
The same with Joe Burns, the Marsh brothers, Adam Voges and Peter Nevill.
Last weekend, an A-League game in Perth almost doubled the Test cricket crowd at the WACA. Local soccer more popular than cricket?
Unheard of.
At the same time, Channel 9 ratings plummeted 25 per cent compared to the Perth Test match against New Zealand last summer.
In the first session of last week’s Test, viewers were down from 611,000 last year to 417,000 in the five-city metro market — a fall of 32 per cent.
In my household, we’re all hanging out for the Big Bash cricket in December-January.
It’s fast and it’s furious and doesn’t take days to get a result.
And it’s why every commercial TV network — Nine, Seven and Ten — will bid for the Big Bash rights when they become available in 2018.
It is now the hottest TV sport property in the country, outside of the NRL and AFL rights.
It’s a game that fits into our busy schedules. It has Kevin Pietersen, Brendon McCullum, Stuart Broad, Ian Bell, Shane Watson, Brad Hodge, Brad Hogg, Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell.
Players far more recognisable than most in the current Australian cricket team.
Players who are entertainers as much as cricketers.
And that’s what the old five-day format is missing.
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