88,172. Those were the total bums on seats at the Melbourne Cricket Ground last Tuesday when the now-concluded Boxing Day Test began. That too for what was after all a dead rubber, with the Urn already being claimed by the men from Down Under.
But then, the biggest rivalry of this sport is perhaps immune to what has been ailing the rest of the cricketing world, for quite a while at that: the five-day version has now — for the lack of a better metaphor — become a beached whale.
The reasons behind why the format that is ostensibly the first byproduct of the sport’s professional genesis has plummeted to abysmal viewership levels are myriad, but there are a few that can be rattled off by even those whose level of investment is bare minimal. Mismatches in terms of competitive quality, rise of the shorter formats, and the lack of a “jazzed-up” feel, to name a few. From the perspective of a nation whose adoration for the sport is as deep-seated as it gets, the former is a very particular area of concern.
Take for instance when Australia took on the Men in Blue in their backyard for a four-Test series in February and March. With a total of 1.1 billion gross impressions, Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) deemed the event as its highest-rated Test series.
Flash forward to the next time Virat Kohli & Co embarked on a five-day sojourn: a three-Test series against Sri Lanka in the island nation. A nimiety of records were broken, but by the time the third clash began in August, the event had fallen to third place in BARC’s most-watched list for the week. Rohit Sharma’s two-format demolition of the aforementioned opponent further underscores how drastically the attention span of our nation’s cricketing audience has diminished. Star Sports 1 Hindi had recorded 16.294 million impressions when the right-hander blitzed his way to the joint-fastest T20I century in Indore a few days ago.
That the ICC has taken cognisance of the issue is quite evident from a keyword that it had started throwing around ever since it confirmed the World Test Championship for 2019: context. The world body’s Future Tours Programme (FTP) has made itinerary-related nods to the issue, cutting down on the number of Tests (from 238 for 2014-2019 to 175 for 2019-2023), despite the addition of two associate nations: Afghanistan and Ireland.
Even from a global perspective, sanctioned experimentation of the format has taken wings, like day/night Tests and a four-day clash between South Africa and Zimbabwe. Whether these endeavours will be able to make the average fan reconnect with Test cricket and push that whale back into deep waters is a question that only time will answer.