Despite the virtual washout on day one at the Gabba, there is plenty of time left in this game to force a result.
As Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley pointed out on SEN this morning, that may not have been the case if Test matches were played over four days. The concept has been raised again recently amid a flurry of Tests around the world ending in three or four days.
Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley.Credit: Brook Mitchell
“Where there’s a bit of rain around or a slower match, you can get to a position where people are calling that it’s going to be a draw really early on,” Hockley said. “I think that would be awful because people would tune out and switch off.
“It’s been a topic of debate and it’s something we need to keep looking at. Test cricket, the tradition, the ultimate test, making sure there’s ample time to play out for the very best players in the world. We need to be continuing to look at it, but we need to be cautious about making a reactive decision based on a narrow data set.
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“You’ll see trends in the way teams and players play the game, and you’ll see variations around the length of Test matches around the world. I think back to the series in Pakistan [in 2022] where we ultimately won in the final session of a five-day Test series. So the great thing is we’re seeing lots of entertaining cricket and we’re seeing results, which is really important. Any decision should be with a really long-term decision and data set in mind.”
Test matches are typically budgeted around four days anyway in terms of ticket and corporate hospitality sales, with the fifth day there to help ensure a result.
One of the major counter-arguments to a fifth day is that four-day games could be scheduled Thursday-Sunday with a higher degree of certainty that there will be play and a result on that fourth day, in a manner similar to golf tournaments.
“People have argued whether you could play Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in subsequent weeks,” Hockley said. “But we’ve got to be very, very careful.”
