Cricket is suffering between the shortest format, T20 cricket, and the longest format, Test Cricket. This is because Test Cricket is tied to wickets. And test cricket’s quality comes from the need to take 20 wickets. On the other hand, T20 cricket is all about runs, wickets don’t matter, and hence the quality of cricket suffers in T20 cricket as it is all about hitting a long ball.
The conclusive message is clear: in cricket quality is driven by The Need to Take Wickets.
A lot of people think it is the shorter format that is killing the longer format. That is simply not true because the world is preferring shorter content and therefore they’re indexing towards a shorter format. This means the shorter format cricket is here to stay. And, that means it is only beneficial for all cricket fans if we can bring the quality of test cricket into the shorter format by giving meaning in the form of “wickets” to T20 format and at the same time reduce the time of Test cricket and make it more result-oriented.
How Do We Give Meaning to Wickets in T20 Cricket?
A suggestion is like this: Every wicket is by default given a weightage of 10 runs. So, in a team A vs team B T20 match, if team A scores 253/3, then team B will have to score either 224/0, 234/1, 244/2, 254/3, 264/4 (the next winning line, if they missed scoring 254/3) and so on. This gives them incentive to preserve the wickets and put a value on the wicket. Therefore, the rash shot making will start coming down and it will become a sensible game.
And, we can reduce the number of wickets from 10 to 7, meaning the game is over when you take seven wickets. This means when a team is 4 wickets down, they only have three more wickets to play with and not six wickets. This again reduces throwing the bat at everything. Because of this, teams will focus more on taking wickets. And, that will automatically increase the quality of the game.
At the same time, we don’t want to tilt the favor completely to the other side. So, the rules for the six needs to be changed. A six is just two runs more than a ground shot, four. There needs to be a bigger incentive to go big. So, in T20 one can introduce 4 (as is) and 8 (instead of six)! This will bring balance between the bat and ball. The batters have incentive to keep wickets but also go big. The bowlers have incentive to take wickets as it will distance the winning target total, and contain the 8s. So, overall quality improves within the same time frame.
How Do We Give Meaning to Time in Test Cricket?
Test cricket is a beautiful format, but with changing times it too needs to change if the format needs to stay relevant. So, again here, it is better to only play for 7 wickets and not 10 wickets. This reduces low quality cricket a bit. This alone should reduce the number of days from 5 to 4 because more often than not the tail enders usually bat for 2 hours per innings.
The second thing that is important is to bring back some seriousness around over-rates. Over rates are often taken advantage of to delay the innings when the opponent is scoring very well or when things are not going well for you like you have your main bowler injured. But, this issue needs to be arrested seriously. This is a loophole that often captains take advantage of. So, the game has to change from day-based to over-based. The game has to be played until four days of 90 overs are played. So, if the over-rate is slow, so be it, they still have to bowl 90 overs in the day or compensate for it the next day. Use the fifth day if required.
Summary of Suggested Changes
T20 Cricket:
1. Only 7 batsmen to take the field in the batting innings.
2. Every wicket has 10 runs weightage. So, the target gets adjusted accordingly.
3. 8s instead of 6s
Test Cricket:
1. Only 7 batsmen to take the field in the batting innings.
2. 90 overs have to be bowled every day or compensate for it the next day.
3. Reduce it to 4 days and have the fifth day for overs to be completed.
There are many other things such as increasing the distance to boundaries and others, provided there is willingness to do so. Remember, earlier Test cricket used to have 8 balls in an over and then it was changed to 6 balls. So, change is important to adapt the game to modern times.
Hope you liked this post, thank you.
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