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The Hindu
26-05-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
Tim Wigmore's new book chronicles 150 years of test cricket history
In his introduction to Test Cricket A History, author Tim Wigmore says the book is 'meant to be read sequentially, as narrative history.' It is helpful advice for taking on 539-pages of a timeline which covers almost 150 years. Test cricket nuts could read it in any manner they like. Back to front, sideways or a languorous cherry-pick of themes, events, personalities through 35 chapters and once again fall head over heels with this capricious, alluring sporting form. Which may appear archaic and out-of-step but has been, as Wigmore shows and tells, adaptive and reflective of its time. It is cricket that held the first officially-recognised international sporting contest. Ever. USA vs Canada, Manhattan 1844. Everything — world cups, continental championships, globalised sporting hoo-ha, Olympic medals tables, bitter national rivalries — only sprang into life later. Enough preening. That Manhattan match over three days was not considered a Test — that came only 33 years later — but that factoid needed an airing. The duration of Tests has gone from three to four to five days to timeless (on till 1945 in Australia). Today they look like three-day high-speed confrontations with much mulling over returning to a four-days format. Again. Falling allure? In March 2026 when it will hit 150, Test cricket faces perhaps its roughest tide. Earlier this year, the World Cricketers Association released its annual report and player survey findings interviewing 328 players, male and female, mostly international. Forty-nine per cent of them believed that Test cricket is the most important format to play in. The bracket that followed was this: the 49% was 'down from 86% in 2019.' Over the last six years, the relevance of Test cricket has fallen to just below half amongst its very practitioners. The format may have often been suspected of dying every decade but we are perhaps at its most critical moment and not merely because it is up against a shorter format. That has happened before — with 50-over cricket and one-day internationals. Today, it is Twenty20 franchise cricket that has burgeoning commercial value and popular appeal amongst players and its audience. The prospect of T20 eating into chunks off the international calendar, replacing bilateral with franchise competition and hoovering up young talent is very real. Cricket hinges its global ambitions on T20 as it returns to the Olympics in Los Angeles 2028. We have been here before and Wigmore has proof that we — aka administrators — stuffed it. At the turn of the century the United States was 'almost certainly among the four strongest cricket nations' (plus Australia, England and Canada) even as the game grew in Argentina. 'Through the mixture of neglect and deliberate exclusion, the chance to develop a bigger and more geographically diverse game was lost.' The inclusive, expansive world view of the book needs to be the lens through which Test cricket can tackle the decade ahead. Not the Big Three cling-wrapping themselves and Tests into tinier and tinier cliques. Fresh eyes The book's biggest asset is that it is a 150-year-old story told through a young voice. Wigmore, 34, has grown up with 21st century cricket and is free of the love and loathings of the previous century. Little is considered 'holy' and therefore, even less is deemed tainted. This frees the book of many tired first-world readings of issues that have divided the game and the refusal to look objectively at T20. Take one random example: there are enough references of how poor umpiring affected outcomes and careers and therefore neither neutral umpiring nor DRS (decision review system) is anathema. Wigmore tells of a Royal Statistical Society paper which analysed Tests between 1986 to 2012: with two home umpires, visiting teams were 16% more likely to be given out lbw. With one home and one neutral the figure fell to 10% and with two neutrals 1%. The book is full of such gems. Like how scientists have proved that swing bowling has very little to do with cloud cover. Reverse swing, with or without bestial ball tampering, 'has aided one of the most beguiling sights in Test cricket.' Then there's the chucking controversy that demonised Muthiah Muralitharan at top volume. Only for sports labs to discover that bowlers with even the most 'pure' actions were also 'bent' which then led to a change in the law. The commonly-bandied false-ism is that this was done 'to accommodate Murali'. The fact is that the law was discovered to be outmoded and needed a fresh benchmark. These are only some slices of the feast offered by this vibrant, global history of the oldest form of cricket. Told across decades and vast spans of geography, using history, memoir, stats, science and the voices of greats living and gone, it is destined to be a classic. Test Cricket is in a word, monumental. If you're looking for two, add terrific. The reviewer spent three decades reporting sport for various organisations, but now follows and writes about sport on her own terms. Test Cricket A History Tim Wigmore Hachette India ₹899
Mint
23-04-2025
- Sport
- Mint
ODIs will remain relevant because World Cup is Olympics of cricket: Steve Waugh
Madrid, Apr 23 (PTI) At a time when the relevance of ODIs has become a topic of debate, former Australian captain Steve Waugh has batted for the format, saying that it would never lose significance as the quadrennial World Cup is akin to the "Olympics of cricket". In an interaction with select media on the sidelines of the Laureus World Sports awards here, Waugh said despite the pressure of shorter formats, ODIs are holding ground as was evident from the record viewership garnered by the 2023 World Cup. "Everyone seems to think one-day cricket's not going to survive, but then you have the World Cup and it's huge and the ratings are massive and people love it and fall back in love with the game. Then it dies down for a couple years and we go through the same scenario," Waugh said. "So right now, somehow we're managing to fit three formats of the game in and there's pressure of T10 maybe coming in, so could be four, four formats of cricket. I don't know how that's all going to get managed, but right now it seems to be going okay. "World Cup is significant for one-day cricket. It's pretty much the Olympics, to play (the World Cup) every four years," he added. Cricket will have its share of spotlight in the actual Olympics as well when it makes a comeback to the Games after more than 100 years in the 2028 Los Angles edition. Waugh also offered his views on other issues concerning international cricket right now, including the obvious Indian dominance in the administration of the sport and the revenue sharing arrangement that favours big Test-playing nations. A recent study by the World Cricketers Association (WCA) claimed that the BCCI currently receives 38.5 per cent of the global cricket revenue, and recommended the figure be brought down to 10 per cent to ensure fairer distribution. Calling for equal pay for all Test players regardless of nationality, Waugh said: "If you play a Test match, every player who plays a Test match should have equal pay. "No one listened to me, but I said that in 1999 in an article, that every Test match player should get paid the same. You play a Test match, the fee should be exactly the same," added the 59-year-old. The report also highlighted the congested international schedule, with overlapping bilateral and domestic leagues making it difficult to manage player workload and team commitments. When pointed out that only the IPL has a designated window, Waugh was candid: "BCCI runs world cricket, that's why they have their own window. Simple." Bumrah among best but unfair to compare others with him ====================================== Among players, Waugh hailed Indian pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah as one of the finest pacers of modern era, but said it would be unfair to assess other Indian fast bowlers using the same yardstick. "Bumrah obviously is one of the best bowlers of this modern era, if not of all time. it's very hard when you're judging the other players on him because he's at the elite level. But India have got plenty of backup and plenty of quick bowlers," he felt. Bumrah has led India's pace attack almost single-handedly for quite a while and remains one of the most feared bowlers across formats. However, frequent injury concerns have plagued his career in recent times. The 31-year-old was India's standout performer during the four-match Test series in Australia, which the visitors lost 1-3. "There's plenty of Indian bowlers out there. Obviously, Bumrah had a great series (in Australia). (Mohammed) Siraj did pretty well and some of the young guys coming through," he said. With Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in the twilight of their international careers, both are eyeing the 2027 ODI World Cup as their swansong. The duo has already announced their retirement from T20Is. Waugh said their participation will depend on "form, fitness and motivation". "I'm not sure. I mean I don't follow their careers that closely but they've both been incredible cricketers for India," the former skipper said when asked if he sees them playing a role in the 2027 edition. "Every career has got to end at some stage. They've both been outstanding and they're still world-class players now but lots of things coming up. "Form, fitness, whether you're motivated to keep playing, there's a lot of pressure playing for India. No doubt if all those things align and they're still keen and willing to improve then they can make it but there's no guarantees for anyone in sport." First Published: 23 Apr 2025, 07:22 PM IST
