How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Big Bash League

The bourgeois liberal economist John Maynard Keynes once challenged an adversary: “when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” This blog has also changed its mind: about T20 cricket.

Test cricket is a batsman’s game. That sounds counter-intuitive, given the common refrain from the purists than modern limited-overs cricket is based around an uneven contest between bat and ball. Sure, there are fewer sixes hit and run rates are lower in the five-day game, but that misses the point: the primary aim of test batting is not to lose one’s wicket.

Given that nearly one-third of tests end in draws, I would say that batsmen are doing just fine defending their wicket. Because cricket lacks any equivalent of baseball’s strikeout, and because bowlers need to deliver something like the Gatting Ball to dismiss a batsman bent on protecting his wicket, the wielders of the willow can stay at the crease forever, only getting out when they start trying to score runs.

If one were to design the ideal form of cricket, what ingredients would one put in it?

First, I would force batsmen to play at most deliveries, not just block or leave the good balls and hit the bad ones. T20 brings urgency to cricket, leaving batsman no time to ‘get their eye in’ and forcing them to play at most balls.

Second, I would want innovative, often unorthodox, 360-degree strokeplay. The ‘Dilscoop’, although first used by Learie Constantine for the West Indies against the M.C.C. at Lord’s in 1933, is a common sight in T20 matches. As is the ramp, the reverse sweep, Kevin Pietersen’s ‘switch hit’, and impromptu tennis shots. Test cricket, hidebound by the customs of Victorian England which problematised leg-side play and haunted by the spectre of Bodyline (‘fast leg theory’), fails to deliver this variety of strokeplay for the spectator.

Third, I would like to see the strategic use of singles to rotate the strike, assisted by fast running between the wickets: the cricketing equivalent of baseball’s ‘small ball’ tactics. Test cricket, defined by the lack any urgency to score runs on the part of the batting team, lacks this element, which also renders athleticism less important.

Fourth, I would like to see a wider range of deliveries used by fast bowlers. This Cricinfo article details the fascinating evolution of the slower ball, first used by Australian pacemen in county cricket in the 1990s during the death of a one-day innings, now a staple of T20 fast bowling. Such balls are pointless in tests, where batsmen are generally in no hurry to play shots and will just block or leave anything they don’t like the look of.

Fifth, having grown up idolising Shane Warne while hearing the doomsayers claim that spin bowling would die a natural death in limited-overs cricket, I would be excited to see spin bowlers dominating the bowling averages. Spinners have not just been the best-performing bowlers in the Big Bash League, but are often used strategically as opening bowlers, something unthinkable in tests, where they are used mainly to exploit the old ball or a friendly pitch.

Sixth, I would wish to see bowlers under the same pressures as batsmen. With (at most) twenty-four legal deliveries, bowlers are looking not just to get wickets (as in tests) or keep down the run rate (as in one-dayers), but to create dot balls and take wickets to slow the batting side’s momentum. Slower balls and yorkers are mixed in with stock balls to create a varied package of deliveries; in tests, the ball is in the batsman’s court, so the attacking skills of bowlers are emphasised at the expense of defensive containment.

Seventh, I would like to see good fielding. The fielding in the BBL is not just good, it is phenomenal. We’re all Jonty Rhodeses now. Test fielding, typified by large gatherings in the slips cordon and vacant outfields, lacks the spectacular boundary-rope catches and four-preventing slides that are the bread and butter of T20.

Eighth, I would want to see efficient field placings. Test cricket’s slips-heavy fields allow shots which beat the infielders to race away to the boundary for four; one-day cricket was (until the I.C.C. changed the playing conditions in mid-2015) hampered by the requirement that two fieldsmen be placed in catching positions, leaving the fielding team with five infielders and two outfielders with which to staunch the powerplay onslaught. T20 fields allow the defence to kill the powerplay with a ring of seven infielders, six infielders and a ‘shortstop’, or whatever else they fancy.

After watching so many BBL matches this summer, I feel that cricket is selling itself short by promoting T20 as the hit-and-giggle form of the sport, a ‘gateway drug’ to what the purists define as the ‘real thing’. This is the real thing: in contrast to T20, test cricket lacks the urgency, the unorthodox strokeplay, the variation in slower balls, the consecutive yorkers, the strategic deployment of spinners, the drama of a dot ball at a crucial moment, and the ‘small ball’ of fielding, strategic single-hitting, and running between the wickets.

The purists’ case for test cricket as the supreme form of the game rests on the valorisation of skill over speed, power, and athleticism. But sport is about more than mere skill: the various football codes as well as other spectator sports such as basketball and ice hockey understand this. Test cricket remains a platform for great individual achievements – centuries, double-centuries, five-wicket hauls – but too easily turns into a damp squib when two mismatched teams face off on an unsuitable pitch.

T20 simply provides a better platform for a contest between two teams’ batting and bowling/fielding line-ups. The Australian sporting public understand this, and are voting with their feet (and their remote controls).