Pataudi was crucial for Indian cricket. Not in favour of trophy being renamed: Tim Wigmore

Time of India

14-06-2025

Tim Wigmore's 'Test Cricket: A History' — the journey of red-ball cricket since its inception in 1877 — has become a much talked-about book on the cricket circuit in recent times. And with the thrilling WTC final between Australia and South Africa at Lord's being followed by Shubman Gill's new-look team taking on England in a five-Test series, Dwaipayan Datta caught up with Wigmore, discussing the future of the purest format of the game, India's chances and a lot more.
Excerpts:
There is a lot of talk about T20 killing Test cricket. But after the format became popular, the number of long-winding draws have come down in Tests. What's your opinion — are T20s a boon or bane for Tests?
I think Test cricket is more exciting than it's ever been. We're seeing higher run-rates, more games getting over in four days and very few draws nowadays. Scoops, ramps, and reverse ramps are all now quite standard shots in Test cricket.
Defensive batting probably has got a little bit worse, but I think almost everything else has got better. Even on the bowling front, you can see Jasprit Bumrah taking wickets with slower balls, yorkers etc, which are T20 tools.
So, yes, probably something has been lost, but a lot more has been gained which is actually adding to the spectacle.
What is your take on the proposed two-tier system in Test cricket to make it more competitive? Won't it make Test cricket an exclusive club, which is essentially against the essence of sport?
I think, firstly, we are forgetting that last year there were quite a few Test upsets — the biggest being West Indies beating Australia in Brisbane.
Then Bangladesh beat Pakistan, we saw Sri Lanka winning in England and then New Zealand beating India 3-0. Having said that, I don't mind the two-tier idea itself, but the worry is that this specific proposal seemed to be about getting the big three (India, England and Australia) playing each other even more, which I do not think Test cricket needs.
Rather, I do think four-day Tests are worth exploring now with the World Test Championship series having three games each per series — three points for a win, one point for a draw.
Of course, when Australia, England and India play each other, they can just have extra matches outside the Test Championship structure.
There has been a recent report saying the WTC Final will lose a lot of money because India aren't there. What is your take on India becoming the economic superpower in cricket and calling all the shots?
If you look at the history of cricket, England and Australia had far too much power historically and they didn't use that power well.
So, what you don't want to see is a bad system of England and Australia having too much power replaced by a system of India having too much power. You need to have a balance. Clearly, the Indian market is at the heart of cricket, but we also need to diversify the sport.
Recently, the Pataudi Trophy for the India- England Test series was renamed the Tendulkar -Anderson Trophy. How do you see the development and given the fact that a chapter of your book is devoted to Pataudi, how important do you think he was in the context of Indian cricket?
I am not particularly in favour of the name change and I think he was crucial for Indian cricket.
The fact that he was quite a good Test match player playing with one eye is in itself a remarkable story. His decision to play with the famous spin quartet, the importance that he gave to fielding and making India a very difficult team to beat at home were all significant. There's a kind of irony that he was deposed as captain before India got their twin successes in West Indies and England in 1971 — the ultimate triumph for a team that he developed.
Do you see shades of Pataudi in Virat Kohli's captaincy? The way he brought in the four-spinner theory to Indian cricket, Kohli showed the courage to play with four pacers which in a way changed the course of Indian Test cricket.
It's a very interesting question — when Pataudi chose four spinners for the first time (Edgbaston 1967), he knew that wasn't the best option, but he did that because those were the best bowlers he had.
But he was always clear that the most important thing was to get more fast bowlers and develop them — so his strategy was more pragmatic than ideological. By the time of Kohli, actually there's been this revolution in fast bowling in India, which has a lot of factors behind it, including the Board's initiative to make pitches for domestic cricket conducive for pacemen.
Who do you think has been the most influential figure in Indian cricket? Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Kohli...?
No, if you ask me to pick one, I'll go for Kapil Dev. You zoom all the way back and here is Kapil Dev, all of 15-16, in an Indian camp. And he's just been given some chapati for lunch. And he says, 'You know, that's not enough to bowl fast', and the Board official just laughs at him saying, 'We don't have any fast bowlers in India'. That was the kind of Indian fast-bowling culture then. Within 18 months of his Test debut in 1978, Kapil became the first Indian fast bowler to get 100 Test wickets.
He made batters across the world acknowledge that India can produce fast bowlers and more importantly, he changed the character of Indian cricket.
Bazball has been a gamechanger for English cricket and it's going to be the topic of discussion through the summer with India touring. Can it stand up to the skill of the Indian bowling attack led by Bumrah?
Bazball is a real phenomenon; it has helped England go from No. 8 to No.
3-4 in the world, which is quite an improvement, but it isn't a revolutionary record like the Australians of early 2000s had. I think England have slightly refined their method in the last 18 months or so. During this India series, it will be interesting to see how England batters deal with wrist-spin. I think Kuldeep Yadav can be a very big factor for India.
I hope Bumrah will play at least four Tests, but my prediction is 3-2 in favour of England.
And finally, if you have to make an all-time best Test XI, from 1877 to now, what would it look like?
Well, this isn't exactly going by records, it's what I feel is the best. I will open with Jack Hobbs and Sunil Gavaskar, followed by Don Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar, Garry Sobers, Imran Khan, Adam Gilchrist,
Wasim Akram
, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Muralitharan.
In your book, you have written about how in the early 20th century, the ICC (then Imperial Cricket Council), didn't include the US and Argentina. Was that a chance missed and how do you see the recent efforts of promoting cricket in the US?
At that point, if you weren't part of the British Empire, you were not eligible to be part of ICC.
Cricket was very strong in the Philadelphia area and they had some of the best cricketers of that period. So that was a real chance to grow that was missed and we see that quite often in Test cricket because administrators are more focused on excluding teams — something that has happened with Kenya in the recent past...Yes there's a new push to promote cricket in America, but they are not going to play Test cricket, that's pretty clear.
However, there is quite a big market there and cricket can get quite a lot of money from the US without it being one of the top four or five sports there.
As a Test historian, how painful is it to see the decline of the long-format game in the West Indies?
It is very sad. We obviously think of their great team from the 1970s onwards, but they were probably the best team in the '60s as well. Even from 1980-95, they were actually very strong. There are a lot of factors behind the decline — money being the most important. It's a high-cost, low-income region, it costs so much to travel between the different islands. And they're not able to generate a huge amount from local sponsors.
It is important to share the money from broadcasting rights with West Indies cricket. Cricket has still not died there, but it's getting there.