For all the quirks that make Test cricket so unique, from a governance perspective the most distinctively challenging aspect is not that a Test match lasts five days; but that it might not. With the recent MCG Boxing Day Test ending in farcical scenes within two days, just weeks after a similarly early finish to the first Test in Perth, administrators now face serious questions.
To make cricket work financially and logistically, administrators reserve venues, broadcasters clear schedules, sponsors activate campaigns and fans plan travel – all on the understanding that a Test could use the full allotment. When it doesn’t, the consequences ripple outward in ways that no other sport ever has to confront.
Organisations like the AFL and the NBL sell seasons. Risk is distributed horizontally across dozens of guaranteed-duration matches with predictable broadcast inventory. If one match underperforms, the next one still exists.
But Test cricket sells occasions. Each fixture is individually massive, and when it underdelivers or is cut short, there’s no replacement fixture the following weekend to average out the loss. The risk is vertical, concentrated, and embedded in a format that provides no guarantees.
When Tests finish early, the cost implications are astronomical. Cricket Australia (CA) estimates that the early finishes to two Tests this summer have cost it approximately $15 million – and that’s not to mention the losses suffered by partners who lose advertising space and brand exposure for which they’ve forked out millions of dollars. Volatility is always ‘priced in’ for weather and some early finishes, but it’s natural that cash-strapped bidders will seek some form of redress and be reluctant to bet big in the future if early finishes become the norm.
Concerningly, for administrators and their partners, this risk is only getting more prevalent and the consequences more severe.
Test calendars are shrinking, making each match more financially significant. Fixed costs are rising in every respect – think production costs, labour, ground staff and security, insurance premiums, and team and official costs. And then there’s the clear emergence of a ‘Big 3’ in Test cricket – outside of whom Test cricket is largely a loss-making product – meaning tests like the Ashes on Boxing Day carry an outsized share of the sport’s economic burden in Australia.
It all adds up to a troubling equation for administrators, which was summed up very simply and almost blithely by CA CEO Todd Greenberg this week: “Short Tests are bad for business”. The implications are of course much more far-reaching – think lower reinvestment in grassroots cricket, impaired talent pathways, fewer fan experiences.
And that brings us to the role of the pitch.
Much has been said about Matt Page and his approach to preparing the MCG pitch. Page certainly had a bad week at work, but for most of us, those go unnoticed. After the debacle at the MCG eight years ago when Australia and England limped to a tedious, soul-sucking draw, Page has brought the MCG back to life over the last two seasons, and that is no mean feat.
Equally culpable for the early finish were the English and Australian batters, who at times played with recklessness bordering on indifference. It was a poor showing from both teams.
But with the stakes so high, the reality is that modern Test pitches are not just a surface for sport – they are risk management tools.
To extend the corporate analogy, there are very few organisations of CA’s scale where an individual (like a curator) can make decisions with multi-million dollar impacts without some degree of oversight and accountability. It’s even more concerning given curators aren’t even employed by CA.
What organisation would accept that level of third-party risk for something that they could significantly mitigate with minimal investment?
And in that milieu, with partners no doubt seeking make-goods for this season and arming up to renegotiate commercials on future seasons, CA now faces no choice: it must start exerting greater control over how pitches are prepared, especially for marquee series like the Ashes and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
What that looks like is anyone’s guess, but the most obvious would be a general directive to curators that Test pitches must be prepared to last 5 days, with some guidance on permissible grass coverage and stricter individual and organisational consequences for non-compliance. Carve-outs could apply for non-marquee series, so curators don’t lose their independence and craft altogether. ‘Soft’ discussions with players on CA’s expectations – for the players’ own good – also can’t be entirely ruled out.
Either way: CA’s hand is now forced. There will almost certainly be a shift towards more docile pitches in Australia, very likely starting with the New Year’s Test at the SCG next week.
A Test that finishes early is of course, not a failure; no cricket fan wants to see a return to the dour Australia pitches of the mid-2010s. But it is a reminder that the format was never designed for a world that budgets for billions of dollars of revenue before a ball is even bowled.
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