|
| Garden of Eden |
| Malavika R Banerjee / Feb 21, 2010, 00:37 IST |
|
The Test match is the tiger of Indian cricket - severely endangered.
India clocked another famous win at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata, where a Test match was being hosted after more than two years. And India’s most famous cricket ground once again gave a great account of itself as one of the last grounds — perhaps the only Indian ground — that packs in near-capacity crowds for the longest version of the game. Eden Gardens is a Test venue that can match up to the best in the world, and however much other Indian venues upgrade on hospitality, seating, food, car parking facilities and many other things, you cannot manufacture the roar of a packed stadium. Which means Eden will remain Tirupati of Test cricket. True, the capacity has been halved by ongoing renovations, but the fact remains that the remaining seats were nearly all full.
However, the passion and commitment that Kolkata showed for the recently-concluded Test must not mislead us. One-day internationals had dealt the first blow to Tests two decades ago, but Twenty20 is the format that has put five-day matches in grave jeopardy. Test cricket have healthy attendance in most other countries, and thrives in England and Australia.
In India, however, things are pretty grim. The Test match is the tiger of Indian cricket — severely endangered, and needing all the encouragement it can get. With the Indian Premier League drawing away all the major sponsors, Test cricket is a shadow of its former self, struggling for sponsorship. The advertising signs around the impossibly green Eden Gardens are now of local brands, and not the corporate giants who used to associate with cricket. I counted six brands of paan masala and three undergarments companies who had taken hoardings on the ground, known as the perimeter boards. It might sound snobbish, but these were not the advertisements that were seen at Test grounds even two years ago, which means that the big corporates with the big bucks are parking their ad spends elsewhere. Where exactly they will come to light in four weeks time, when the world’s top cricketers turn out in IPL colours, wearing jerseys that are patchworked with sponsor logos.
Till 2006, Test cricket and one-dayers were rotated for sponsorship between Pepsi, Videocon and TVS. Thereafter, no single sponsor has had a particularly long run, and every tournament sees a new sponsor.
Earlier there were many hats thrown into the sponsorship ring, but today, there is a feeling that sponsors for Test cricket are hard to find. This has led to a situation where cricket is getting more and more popular even as its purest form is losing steam. India has a very wealthy cricket board, which means that Test cricket can be subsidised by other forms for many years to come. However, that just solves the money part of the problems.
The obvious charms of T20 have given rise to a whole generation of youngsters who want to perfect the slap-dash of the shortest version rather than the forward defense prescribed by WG Grace. It’s akin to learning to type in an SMS without learning to write first — it ruins the grammar of the game. Sachin Tendulkar recently said that he was worried for Test cricket as the ultimate form of the game, and fears that talented youngsters will gravitate to T20. To make matters worse, India plays fewer Tests than many other countries. We play our next Test at the end of the year, and will play around eight Tests in the calendar year where others clock 12-13 Tests annually. Significantly, we were not scheduled to play Tests versus South Africa, and the two Tests were slotted right on the eve of the South African tour.
Clearly, Test matches are becoming a rare treat in India. All the more reason then, to enjoy an afternoon of watery sunshine at the Eden Gardens, as Hashim Amla withstands the wiles of Harbhajan Singh. The latter finally prevailed, giving India a famous win and helping the team retain the no.1 ranking in Tests. Hopefully the top position and the passion with which the team achieved the win will make Tests look cool and hip in the eyes of youngsters, and give Tests a new lease of life..
(The writer is director of Gameplan, a sports marketing company)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Read Business news in |  |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Advertisements |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Content Guide
