The problem with four-day cricket

I decided to write this post midway through a game because my feelings at this point are quite pertinent. 

Quite frankly, I am struggling to stay in love with county cricket.

I say this as someone whose love affair with the game goes back well over fifty years, but so far this season I have found myself switching off a time or two, deciding that gardening, cleaning my car or going on a lengthy dog walk was preferable to watching another long runfest on a moribund pitch.

I had an email from The Cricketer on Friday, asking if I planned to renew my subscription. I replied today to say that I wouldn't, because the direction of the game is increasingly unpalatable for me. 

As regular readers of the blog will know, I live 283 miles from the County Ground and, since the passing of my parents, I am unsure when I will next visit it. The length of the journey is one thing, the cost of hotels for the duration another. Factor in meals, fuel and a desire to be near my family and you can see the problem. I know there are people who would do that, who follow their side around the country and I applaud their commitment, but everyone's circumstances are different and I would never criticise anyone for personal choice.

The game itself is another matter. 

It is really only worthwhile travelling for a four-day game, but such is the arrangement of fixtures that I can only do so at the extremes of the season, when the weather is least likely to be favourable. There is little on this earth more depressing than a cricket ground in the rain, except leaving that ground to go back to a soulless hotel room when there is no chance of play. You will appreciate, I hope, that a 600-mile round trip to sit in a hotel room watching the rain fall is not high on my list of things to do in my retirement...

Regardless of Derbyshire's fortunes in it (and this summer has been a challenge) four-day cricket is often very dull. The powers that be want it to replicate Test cricket and for the pitches to be similar to those on which that elite level is played. 

Which is fine, but there has to be an understanding that a lot of those playing on the pitches, while obviously good players, are not of true 'elite' standard. They will have their days in the sun, they will score runs, they will take wickets. But so good are those pitches that the game has been rendered almost formulaic.

Unless the players turn up on the first day to find a track greener than Robin Hood's tunic, the aim on winning the toss will be to bat... for a day and a half. Let's rack up 600 and put them under pressure, is the tactic, but it often doesn't work, because team B goes in and also bats for a day and a half, scoring 550. Which takes you to the fourth day, even if the rain stays out of it and somehow they have to contrive a result. 

Except, with eight points for a draw, neither side is especially inclined to risk losing those points and the game. Thus, the final day is rendered academic and at the end of it all the most likely result at the start is the one that happens. 

I know there can be positive results, teams can collapse, victories CAN be achieved. But generally speaking, it doesn't happen often enough. Just look at the current round of matches. Granted there has been rain interference, but to still be in the second innings of games as we come towards the end of the third day isn't a lot of fun. If you look at the crowds on the various streams, I would suggest a lot of people are coming to the same conclusion.

At a time when the number of fixtures and congestion are constantly under discussion, the time to return to three-day cricket is rapidly approaching. As I have written before, limit first innings to 100 overs each, make this the new daily maximum and allow the side batting second to bat to a maximum of 200 per combined first innings, if they wish. 

Then drop the draw points to zero, meaning that teams have to take a risk on the last day to secure more than batting and bowling bonus points. You might lose, but you might win and if you played games Friday to Sunday, there is a fair chance that the Sunday crowd could be quite impressive, in the knowledge that there will be a game worth watching. 

Test cricket is now played faster, more aggressively. Bazball if you will, though I'm not a fan of such monikers. Use the word 'maximum' or 'seed' in my presence and I will likely walk away..

The Vitality Blast is coming and it may just save Derbyshire's season (though I am not hopeful, at this stage.) The fifty-over competition may do similarly and when batters need to really go for it we may see more even-handed cricket.

Regardless of whether the game returns to one division or stays as two, three-day cricket is badly needed to make the longer form of the game worth  watching again. 

In a fourteen-game season, players would have fourteen less days of playing.

But when they go out there, the cricket would be more entertaining and meaningful than much that I have watched this summer.

While we're at it, let's return to uncovered wickets, or only allow a light roller between innings, or none at all when the match has started. 

A better balance between bat and ball would restore my interest. Between bigger bats, flatter pitches, shorter boundaries and incentives for mediocrity, you might as well plonk a bowling machine at one end to save time and effort..