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ShareThe first three days of the Delhi Test yielded just 11 wickets. And this was one of the few remaining result-oriented Test match grounds in the country. So why blame Twenty20 then for the declining interest in Test cricket in India?
Two of the top three Test teams in the world are battling it out for the right to be called the world champions of Test cricket. And yet, the stadia in Bangalore, Mohali and Delhi were bare. Although the TV audience appears to be holding up, going by the level of sponsorship, the advertisers must be reassessing their RoI on that front too.
The audience for Test cricket had anyway started declining with the advent of one-day cricket. Twenty20 cricket will obviously accentuate that trend. But drawn Test matches will definitely sound the death knell.
That's why the ICC a few years back introduced measures to produce more results in Test cricket. A minimum of 90 overs a day, with half an hour of extra time to make up for lost overs, was a step in that direction. And yet, the third day of the Delhi Test was the first time we got the full quota of 90 overs in spite of the extra time.
The slow over rate is not the main problem, however. It's the pitches being produced for Test cricket these days, especially in India. Most of them are no good for either fast bowlers or spinners.
The series against South Africa ended 1-1, but that was after India produced a rank turner for the last Test because they were down 1-0. Earlier, against Pakistan, two out of the three Test matches were drawn.
And they were boring draws with no chance for either team to produce a result. India did win the series 1-0, but after the first Test which produced that victory, it was a meaningless 10 days of hard labour for the players and viewers alike.
This series is going along similar lines, with a 1-0 lead for India and the third Test heading for a draw. The only way it can produce a result now is if the pitch breaks up on the last day. But what you really want is an even contest between bat and ball for most of the match, and not just the last day.
Australia did come close to winning the first Test in Bangalore, but that was due to some inept batting by the Indian middle order. The fact that the Aussies failed to get through either Harbhajan Singh or Zaheer Khan tells you how docile the wicket became as the match progressed. The Aussies did lack a quality spinner, but then India's captain Kumble bowledover 50 overs on that pitch without taking a single wicket.
The Mohali pitch had a little more life than the one in Bangalore. Mishra was also an unknown quantity, and his googlies got a fair crop of wickets. Even then, it took some strange tactics in the Australian second innings to give India the victory.
Unlike the Aussie bowlers who tended to bowl short because pitching it up to Sehwag and Gambhir invariably resulted in a hammering, Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan were getting the ball to move by bowling a full length. Hayden and Katich decided to knock them off that length in the second innings by going on the attack, and it worked.
Zaheer and Ishant were certainly less effective at the start of the second innings. But Hayden and Katich tried to continue with the onslaught even when Harbhajan came on to bowl. The three quick wickets Bhajji got were all to attacking shots.
Mitchell Johnson showed on the last day that it was still an easy batting wicket, and if the Australian batsmen had applied themselves to mainly defending against the spinners, mostly off the back foot, as they have done in Delhi, then another draw was on the cards there too.
There are two reasons why the pitches for Test cricket in India are more likely to produce draws than results. India does not want any live grass on the pitch, because that would help pace bowling. India has spinners while the opposition does not, so we want to play to our strength and their weakness.
This has of course always been the case, but the pitches, especially in places like Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai, used to be brittle, with their surfaces starting to break up sometimes on the very first day. We saw one such pitch in Kanpur for the final Test against the South Africans, but that as I've said was an act of desperation.
By and large it appears the curators - and their expert advisors hired from New Zealand - have been instructed to produce pitches that will last the entire five days, perhaps taking into account the loss of TV ad spots in case the match ends early.
Now you can understand their quandary - no grass on the pitch, and it has to remain true for five days. So what do they do? One way out is to mix a lot of clay and dry grass into the pitch soil, and roll it out well so that it bindsfirmly enough to remain intact for five days.
The catch is that in the long run, it's going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Yes, we'll have five-day Test matches, but if the sides are evenly matched, then a draw is the likely result. And, if one of the sides is weak and getswalloped, that's equally boring.
The way out is to produce pitches for pace bowlers, now that we are producing bowlers like Ishant who are among the best in the world. Or produce turners like we used to in the past. The in-between stuff is a killer for Test cricket.
PS: The last time I predicted a draw in Mohali, the Aussie batsmen managed to prove me wrong by committing hara-kiri. Let's hope it works this time too.
