Ashes Blindness, Sushi and Duckpond End

Test Championship continues to Simmer

“Nobody really cares about the World Test Championship,” said Jimmy Anderson in an interview to promote his biography last week. “To be honest, I find it utterly confusing,” added Ben Stokes a couple of days after the Christchurch Test match before confirming that he had given it “little consideration.”

Both are great cricketers and fine men, so criticism should be tempered. Best, perhaps, to observe merely that it is curious how both can be so out of touch with the sentiments of the other Test-playing nations for whom the deeply flawed competition has been a saviour.

‘Ashes Blindness’ is an understandable problem which has existed amongst some players, followers and indeed commentators in England and Australia for many decades. The inability to see the game’s big picture beyond the biennial showpiece is a hereditary condition for which no blame can be attached. Although Stokes, with family in New Zealand, might have noticed how much winning the inaugural WTC meant to New Zealanders.

The England captain may have shrugged his shoulders and displayed disinterest in the WTC but he was positively bristling about the over-rate penalties imposed after the first Test. Presumably it was the 15% of the players match fees which upset him rather than the three WTC points which were deducted – to go with the 19 they had docked during the last Ashes. He said he would like clarity from the ICC, to go with some clarity about the WTC, presumably. He did make a valid point about the match being won with ten hours to spare.

The Test Championship is comically flawed but, for all its imperfections, there is a simple concept: The two teams which win the highest percentage of their matches qualify for the final. Stokes is a clever man. There was surely some disingenuity about his observation. And a Test match day is advertised as 90 overs of cricket. People pay money to watch that. One of the three full days in Christchurch contained only 82 overs, including the extra half hour.

Watching Stokes captain his team is engaging to the point of fascination, a Test connoisseur’s dream, from minor tweaks, to leg slips and complete strategy changes in the middle of an over. It is entertainment in itself and Stokes says, correctly, that such creativity and imagination requires time . But it isn’t actually cricket, right? And it’s the cricket that people would prefer to see a bit more of, or at least the amount they are supposed to see.

Anyway, what a joy to be back in windy Wellington. More days of gale force breeze (and higher) than any other city in the world, but all the more charming for it. Unless you’re a bowler at the Basin Reserve required to run into a Southerly strong enough to regularly knock you out of your stride. The Basin may be the only international ground in the world at which no-balls can be excused.

And back to the World Test Championship which is probably the strongest driver for the likes of Kagiso Rabada, Keshav Maharaj and Tristan Stubbs to be playing Test cricket. The chance to be crowned World Champions in the format that they, and the vast majority of professionals, regard as the greatest. The Indian players, too, talk about the competition in highly respected if not reverential terms.

In a matter of hours South Africa will start the second Test against Sri Lanka in Gqeberha with an opportunity to take a giant stride towards the final at Lord’s on June 11 next year. It may not be a big deal for bowling coach Anderson and captain Stokes, but it most certainly is for the South Africans, Sri Lankans, New Zealanders, Indians and even Australians who still harbour hopes of getting there.

Time for a bit of Wellington sushi and a few overs from the Duckpond End at St.George’s Park before an early night and the start of what promises to be a cracking second Test at the Basin.