The hills are alive with the sound of Test cricket breathing – healthily but labouredly
Alan Gardner15-Jun-2023Talking about the death of Tests is a contractual obligation of cricket writing – even in the 1880s, learned scribes were worrying that it wouldn’t keep up with thrilling new forms of entertainment like hoop rolling and the can-can. But while the Light Roller enjoys indulging in doom-mongering as much as the next semi-humorous monthly column, the arrival of the English summer has brought with it renewed hope for the game.Following on from the hotly contested World Test Championship final – certainly a couple of the umpiring/selection decisions were hotly contested – this week we have the start of the Ashes. What a time (for the format) to be alive!The spectacle of Australia and India contesting the Test mace in England is, for some folk, the acme of international cricket; no plucky New Zealand to politely crash the party this time. To be honest, for those outside the Big Three, it probably feels as if this is the unavoidable endgame for international cricket (even if CA, the ECB and the BCCI aren’t quite as tight as they used to be). If there was any halfway legitimate excuse to make India an official participant in the Ashes, then you can be sure these guys would have tried it.Related
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Anyway, until the age-old rivalry takes a tip from the IPL and starts including a mandatory number of Indian players, we’ll work with what we’ve got – and the first Bazball Ashes promises to be an all-you-can-eat buffet of vibes and bluster. In one direction you’ve got Stuart Broad bantering harder than he’s ever bantered before, while Ben Stokes promises to “make memories for England” while dressed as some sort of athleisure vicar. In the other, Pat Cummins is pushing to oversee a “legacy-defining” twin success, as his countrymen queue up to question whether Bazball really exists at all.(Steve Waugh, old Mr Mental Disintegration himself, questioned whether England had a Plan B, without realising Plan B Bazball – as are plans C through Z.)There must be a genuine question around whether Test cricket can handle the next few weeks, given the hype around a) the men’s Ashes, and b) Bazball. It feels like a cricketing version of the Large Hadron Collider, with the game’s most-potent red-ball particles being fired at each other at incredible speeds – we might end up finally discovering the secrets of the format, or create a singularity from which nothing can escape.At which point, the players on both sides could get back to the thing that really motivates them: golf.
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“Hi there, welcome to the ICC. Let me show you around. Can you I get you a cup of coffee?Oh, what’s that, Geoff – we’re still waiting on the coffee beans? Didn’t we put that order in, like, six months ago?Okay, sorry about that. Anyway, our goal here at the ICC is to grow the game of cricket around the world…What’s that, Geoff? You saying you have a piece of paper there that says we’re now just India’s piggy bank? They shake us and money comes out of our a$$? Ah, okay, they’ve made that official now. I suppose BCCICC does have a ring to it…Well, we do have a World Cup scheduled for later this year. Shall I tell you about the planning for that? It starts in a few months, I think we have the fixtures here somewhere… Geoff? Geoff?”
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It’s not often that the Light Roller can look back through our archives and say: we called it. But there’s a first time for everything, and after predicting that was on its way back to the top, we were delighted to see the showrunners take the hint and bring back Zaka Ashraf, arch-nemesis of incumbent chairman Najam Sethi. Pakistan’s equivalent of the Chuckle Brothers, only with less impressive moustaches, Sethi and Ashraf played “to me, to you” with responsibility for the board through ‘s glory years. Now, with the current season heading towards its climax – can Pakistan prevent the Asia Cup from being wooed away by powerful suitors? – the two old stagers are squaring off in the wings. And what could be more helpful to the board’s capacity to stand up to the BCCI than a couple of administrators trading court orders and shouting at clouds?
