Testing the cricket team

BCCI must rein in its greed and give players a break

The Board of Control for Cricket in India  (BCCI) has done well to heed Indian captain Virat Kohli’s complaint of an unwarrantedly full cricket calendar that leaves players little time to unwind and, as importantly, prepare for the next tour. Kohli was referring to the short gap between the end of the domestic series against Sri Lanka, which ends on December 24, and the start of a long tour of South Africa beginning with the first Test on January 5. The tour, which lasts till February, will involve three Tests, six One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and three Twenty20 (T20) Internationals. Actual preparation will be limited to one two-day warm-up match before the team leaves on December 28 to take on a side ranked number two in Tests and number one in ODIs.

 
It is small wonder then that players are demanding groundsmen prepare hard, bouncy wickets for the remaining matches against Sri Lanka to gain practice in conditions they will face against the Proteas. Given that such wickets do not offer Indian bowlers a special advantage against their current opponents, the administrators of the cricket board should surely be concerned that, in effect, an international tour is being treated as a practice run. Yet, it is hard not to sympathise with Kohli and his team when the 2017-18 cricketing calendar is scrutinised.
 
Certainly, his objections gained even more credibility when it became clear that the dates of the South African tour were postponed to accommodate this Sri Lankan tour. Considered from a purely spectator point of view, this scheduling is inexplicable. The Indian team had toured the island-nation only recently — between July and September — to play five ODIs, three Tests and one T20. The need for yet another India-Sri Lanka series just two months later (the tour started in November) is hard to understand. The first Sri Lanka tour was followed by a series against Australia over September-October that comprised three T20s and five ODIs and one against New Zealand in October-November of three T20 matches and three ODIs. Could the lack of Test matches in the preceding two series have prompted the BCCI to haphazardly squeeze in another Sri Lanka series so that India gains some Test match practice?

 

In that case, the broader lesson is that the cricketing calendar needs to include more Tests. Ever since the advent of the T20 version of the game, dwindling spectator interest in Test cricket has been whittled even further, which is to say the revenue-earning potential of Test cricket is minimal. Nothing reflects this better than the back-to-back no-Test tours by Australia and New Zealand earlier this year. In effect, the Indian team will end up playing just six Tests in the last five months, that too against a team that stands only sixth in the ICC Test rankings.
 

Ironically, if there is a board that can afford to sacrifice revenue to help its team maximise Test practice, it is the BCCI. The board has for long been the world’s richest cricketing body. It is no surprise then that Kohli has also demanded a greater share of the BCCI’s wealth for cricketers ahead of contract talks that began last week. Many have criticised this move on the grounds that this year alone saw basic annual salaries of players doubled to Rs 1.9 crore. Since it is cricketers' talent that is drawing in the money in the first place, they should be entitled to a larger share of an expanded pie. When they are forced to play to cramped schedules, those demands gain more credence. In that context, the plan to reduce their workload from the current 140 days to 80 days from the 2019 season is a sensible one; if the schedule were to include more Tests, the Indian team would stand a better chance of defending its position as the number one Test team.