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Intelligence Squared
What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. What can the history of Test cricket tell us about identity, empire and who gets to believe long on the world's biggest sporting stage? With the Ashes in full swing this week in Perth, deputy cricket correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, Tim Wigmore joins us to discuss the people, power structures and inequalities that have shaped the game since 1877. In conversation with Joey De Erso, he looks at how Test cricket reflects questions of class, race, empire and opportunity and what its 150 year legacy reveals about global culture and international relations. Let's join our host, Joey de Erso now with more.
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D
Welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Joey Durso and our guest today is Tim Wigmore. So Tim Wigmore is a sports writer for the Daily Telegraph. He's also written for the Economist and the New York Times. He's a multi award winning author of books including Crickonomics, which is a former Waterstone Sports Book of the Year and his most recent book which he'll be discussing today. And I've read it and it's very good. It's Test Cricket A History. It's a narrative history of Test cricket and it's just been shortlisted for the William Hill so Sportsbook of the year award for 2025. Welcome Tim. Looking forward to speaking to you today.
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A
Hi, Jerry, thanks so much.
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D
Yeah, so let's just jump straight into it then. So, test cricket history. Where did test cricket begin?
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A
Well, yeah, the first test match was in March 1877 in Melbourne between Australia and England. So it's been going for 148 years now. And it's, you know, it's sort of been a game that's almost out of time from its inception. You know, the Victorians were time poor. They were worried that people wouldn't go for day after day after day. And yet here we are, 148 years on, we now have 12 countries playing it and there's been over two and a half thousand test matches. And yeah, there's something all about the sort of psyche of test cricket where fans kind of love nothing more than worrying that the thing they love is about to die. And actually look at the history. It's always been this way. So the first reference I could find to basically the game's gone. The players all play for, for money, not the badge on the shirt anymore was 1884.
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D
Well, we're still saying it's probably worth just really quickly going over what test cricket is. I mean, we've got the Ashes just starting right now, which is the kind of pinnacle of test cricket. Just, you know, why is test cricket as opposed to the shorter forms of the game?
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A
So test cricket, the strange kind of nature of it is there's two innings per each side, so there's four innings in total in the match. Matches can last well, they can last five days, although actually historically some have been timeless. And I mean there was one match once that lasted nine days and then England had to leave South Africa to get a boat home and it was still a draw. Yeah, so it's got, I suppose what sort of separates it from most other sports is the multi day element. And the idea of this sort of second chance is kind of is built as well into the game. And there is a certain kind of romance to the idea that, you know, you can get out for naught as an individual in the first innings and then the second innings you might get a century and you know, from despair you get this brilliant achievement. And that's something that's quite distinct about test cricket. And, and I think that the sense that, and I suppose the conditions vary so much, you know, you have to, you know, to be good in Perth, in Chennai, in, you know, freezing cold Leeds or whatever, it requires a huge, the kind of adaptability of players it demands. And I suppose the series element, you know, The Ashes now there's five matches again, like in football, you have a final is a one off match in 90 minutes and so on. So to have five games played over six, seven weeks has been even longer in the past. It's almost like for that period of time, it's his own kind of world. It's like, I don't know, like a box set or a drama. You need to binge and it's kind of all consuming and the way that the plots just kind of simmer and simmer and develop and develop.
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D
So it really felt to me this summer with the India series really gripped certainly me, but a lot of people in a way that I hadn't really seen outside of an Ashes series. I hadn't really noticed that as much. Was that exciting for the Test, for the game?
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A
Yeah, it was great. Although the kind of the fundamental challenge the Test cricket faces now is it's very vibrant in Australia, England, India, and the question is really what about the rest of the world? Which comes back to things like fixture lists. Also just how money is shed around. There's a lot of money in cricket, but people don't really want to give up what they think is theirs. But there comes a point where you need competitive balance. I think competitive balance is always more important in Test cricket than another sport because, you know, as a football fan, you know, you know, if you go into your team win 5 nil, that's actually really, really fun. Whereas if you go to a Test match and it's just a slow, you know, evisceration of an opponent who has no chance over, draw out over three, four days, that doesn't have the same, it just doesn't appeal in the same way. I mean, good Test cricket, exciting Test cricket needs two good teams basically. And so the kind of competitive balance is so, so important. And that's something administrators have better sort of talk about in the book. So you, you used to have, when the Sydneys came to England, for example, they used to get about a fifth of what England would earn from the series in broadcasting rights. Now Wasinis wouldn't get anything for that. They would get England to come in return. But because the economy's different, England would earn 15 times as much from hosting as Westinnis earned from hosting England. So this is looking at, these are the fundamental problems with the. Which lead to players from smaller countries with smaller economies, they're more likely to retire early from Test cricket to play in other forms of cricket. T20, the shortest form of the game in domestic league they wanted to do that because it's a short career and they need to earn as much money as possible, which is understandable. But I guess the point is with the more collectivist thinking, you'd be able to actually have more teams that are stronger, which it actually is in everyone's interest as well, because England, if virtues come to England, they lose in three days. That's actually not good for England either because it's bad for their broadcasting rights and so on in the medium term as well.
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D
So one of the things I really liked about your book is that it's not just a sporting story, it's one of history and politics, the story of the British Empire. Do you want to tell a bit of the story about how cricket came to India, which is, you know, the game's great superpower right now.
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A
Yeah, to cricket, you know. So the early story of cricket around the world is really of being exported through the British Empire. And so the first record of a game being played, of creating India is it was played in good durat along a beachfront by British Merchant Sailors in 1721.
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D
1721. That's earlier than I thought.
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A
That's so 300 years ago now. And then the Kolkata Cricket Club is formed in 1792, which is the first cricket club outside Britain. So you know, before any in Australia say. But cricket, cricket initially in India is played by the British population, the European population and actually it's the Parsis are the first community, first Indian community who really get on board with cricket and they start to play against British teams in Bombay from 1877 and out of this sort of competition morphs into a kind of multi faith competition in Bombay. So you have a Hindu team that started in 1907. Then you have a Muslim team and you have a team called the. Which makes that we just kind of Sikhs and Christians in India via Europeans. And so you have a time when these matches are playing the Pentagon, as it ultimately evolves to and it's been played, you know, as partition is basically about to happen. And yet, you know, you have the competition paid in 1946, a year before partition and you know, that was almost. And the rapport between the Hindu team and the Muslim team and the spectators days from both teams is really, really good and it becomes a political thing. So with, with Jinnah and Gandhi they see this tournament through a particular lens. So with Jinnah, he's actually a big fan of it and he sits and he kind of talks about how it shows how good relations can be between Hindus and Muslims. Whereas with Gandhi, he resents the way the cricket is organized because he, he says it encourages people to think in terms of their own religion and what divides them more than what brings them together. So it's a little snapshot of how cricket again and again has been. This, this kind of, this bisphilous school and this, this sort of very silly, strange game has had an outsized importance, really.
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D
Yeah. And one of the things that I, you know, someone who follows cricket not nearly as closely as you surprised me was how recent India's cricket really taking.
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A
Off in India was in terms of the national team.
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D
Yeah, yeah.
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A
This is remarkable. So really until. This is one of the things but I was kind of aware of, but the extent of it really shocked me. So until 2001, India lose basically two tests for every one that they win. So they are really not really even a mid table team. They are, they're generally pretty appalling away from home. So Sachin Tendulkar, for example, one of the greatest, maybe the greatest, most home senior player of all time, who was lucky to talk to, he only wins one of his first 44 Test matches away from home. So India basically, they can't win away from home. And the reason is they don't have fast bowlers basically. And they are basically relying on players, middle class players in a few cities for the bulk of their talent. And what happens in Indian cricket is basically you get a huge, huge improvement in infrastructure, in talent ID and everything outside of the biggest cities, the traditional centers of talent. And so you begin to get. So India basically actually starts to use its population, which is this incredible asset. It has actually starts to use, well, not the whole of its population, but it kind of opens up its team to players from all the talents. And basically as the Indian economy grows, there's more avenues for players to actually rise from relatively obscure places. And of course, look at, these are often cities of like a million people. Ranchi, for example, where Ms. Dhoni came from, is seen as like a small city, but it's got a million people live there. But in Indian kind of cricket terms, these were small places and now they are getting serious investment. You have a competition called the Indian Premier league formed in 2008, a T20 competition. And even though it's a different format of the game, basically it's contributed to a huge improvement, huge improvements in infrastructure and talent idea and so on. So India's now starting to become the sort of superpower that it maybe was always destined to be. But yeah, one of the incredible stories I found from the book was that in the 1960s, India were a pretty poor team and they didn't win a lot of matches. And there was one they did win against New Zealand at home test match. And they were there, their kind of match fees were 250 rupees each for a test, really not very much. And they beat New Zealand, but they beat them in four days. And so afterwards, the players get their envelopes with their money in and they are thinking, was it going to be a bonus? We actually had a victory here, which is pretty rare. Instead they only find us 200 rupees, not 250. And they've been basically TV money. Yeah, no, they've been docked a fifth of their match re on a kind of per rata basis because they'd won in four days. So they've been better off winning in four. They would have been better off losing in five days than winning in four. And which is very strange. But actually because of the lack of money in Indian cricket before, lots of very good players were actually retiring very early from domestic cricket or even just not pursuing cricket seriously as a career. And now cricket, even if you're not near the national team, you can still make a really, really good living from the game.
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D
And now the Indian Premier League is up there with the football, English Premier League and the NFL in America as one of the biggest sports leagues in the world. Right, in financial terms, yeah, absolutely.
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A
And this is one of the questions for. But test cricket is how it can kind of how it can exist alongside the ipl. What I would say is the IPL has been going now since 2008, so 17 years, and yet it's expanded, but it's still only two and a half months. If it, if it, you know, doesn't expand beyond 3ish, then there is still plenty of time for test cricket to be played. It just needs to, it just needs probably a few windows a year of. A bit like Gavin international football actually, where you have, you know, maybe two or three. You maybe have three windows a year of three weeks each where you have only test cricket is being played. And you know that if you go and see West Indies or whoever, that should be at full strength because nothing, you know, even the sort of, the name, the test cricket, it conveys this certain gravitas and that gravitas is completely lost. If people go to a game, they know that half of it, half of the players who should be playing for a country are playing in a domestic league instead. And so that's why basically the schedule of cricket has been a complete mess because it's not really run by anybody. So you have this kind of wild west where you might have five leagues at the same time and then also test matches. So these are. Yeah. So with the administration of cricket, looking at the history, it's always been terrible, but never has that poor administration left the game as exposed as it does now.
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D
And another great story you tell is one of South Africa. Do you want to just sort of talk through that quickly from. From where cricket in South Africa began and, of course, apartheid.
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A
Yeah. I mean, so cricket in South Africa has been really. Well, it's been completely, intimately connected to race from the very start. And actually, one of the. Yeah, the things I learned beyond cricket through the prisma of cricket in the book was actually before. Well, well, before formal apartheid, South Africa was still completely. The racial divides in South Africa were still completely rigid, basically. So South Africa, they stopped playing in 1889 as a test nation, but they refused to pick any players who aren't classed as white. They also refused to play against anyone who is not white. So there's only one player who. Yeah, one player who's not white who plays against South Africa until 1992 in Test cricket. So over the first century. So the way in which England, Australia and New Zealand, especially sort of England, they tacitly agree with South Africa's policy. So there's a number of very good players for England, Ranji Singh being maybe one of them, who's a kind of almost an Indian aristocrat, who goes to play for England brilliantly around 1900, but England just tacitly agreed to not pick him against South Africa, basically, not to upset South Africa as they see it. And so this culminates in the 1960s, as the apartheid regime is attracting more attention around the world and being attacked more and more. But for the South African government, cricket is so important as a way of almost pretending that the country has acceptance and there's a normal kind of level of life there, almost. And so the Southern government do everything they can to maintain normal ties in cricket. But in 1968, England are playing a Test match against Australia. They pick Basil de Oliveira, who had left South Africa a few years earlier and he was classed as Cape Coloured in South Africa, but he had gone on to play in England and then to qualify to play for England, and he scored 158 against Australia in an Ashes match. But England's next, very next tour is to South Africa. So they went to 1968, 69, and they picked the squad immediately after. And there's huge pressure from the South African government not to pick Basil Oliveira, because for them to have someone who would not be allowed to share a bar, interact basically with white people on equal terms, suddenly playing against them in a test match would be terrible from their point of view. So they do everything they can to induce Inghan not to pick him. And Doliber, there's this very tense, long selection meeting at Lords and the minutes have mysteriously been lost. So we don't know exactly what happened, but basically he's not. The meet again to Dolveria is not selected. And there is a public outcry because it's so clear that, you know, this is politics interfering with sport and England actually basically acquiescing with the apartheid regime. But then an England player pulls out injured and Doliver is picked as a replacement. So he briefly has this dream that he'll go back to South Africa and be able to play. So he was from Cape Town and as a kid he would go and watch test matches, but he would be in the area of the ground called the cage, a little corner of the ground which would allow people not classed as white to be spectators. And everyone there would always support the teams that Africa were playing against because they obviously hated us. And the resheet, fair enough, there was a little act of resistance. So the thought that this boy from the cage might actually be actually in the middle were just incredible. But the South African government, they refuse to allow the tour to go ahead if Dolivera is selected. And you have the incredible hypocrisy of John Vorster, the Prime Minister of South Africa, who attacks England for bringing politics into sport by selecting with selection of Dolivera. And then the tourists cancelled South Africa pay one further series, 1970. Wouldn't they have a very strong side? And they whitewashed Australia 4 0. But after this, basically South African cricket is exiled and they don't play Test matches again until 1992 and after the end of apartheid. And cricket has this huge, huge power. And one of the amazing stories as well, I found out. So when Nelson Mandela meets the Australian premieres in 1986, when he's still in prison, basically the first thing he asks is, is Don Bradman still alive? So Don Bradman is the sort of greatest Test cricket of all time. Has his average of 99, which is incredible. But he'd also, as chairman of the Australian Crip Australian board, he had been instrumental in stopping at all from South Africa in 1971 and therefore really starting the boycott of the South African team. So Manzela remembers this and is very grateful for this. So there's this. Yeah, the strange connection between maybe the best descriptive of all time and Nelson Mandela. So. Yeah, again, again, it was amazing how much you can almost tell that. You can tell so many wider stories, wider political stories through the prism of Tasrika. And it really has had this huge importance on nation building and identity and relationship in. Yeah, in quite a. Yeah, quite a peculiar way. But it's. It's always been there from, from the very start.
- [20:27]
D
Yeah. One thing I found really interesting in your book was the role of captaincy, which, you know, the captain in cricket is, I think you can say is more important than any other sport. Setting the fields and all those other things is huge, really like mentally taxing role. But it's been a very political thing over the years, is that fair to say?
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A
Yeah, captaincy has been incredible political thing. And I think the reason is, if you think about what a. A Test cricket tour is also would have been historically, it's not just a cricket tour. Right. It's a diplomatic exercise as well. And the people are thinking about who they want to give all these speeches at the cocktail parties and so on. And so you see again and again, people are obsessed with class and even with race in terms of who are they picking as captains. So In England until 1952, they had amateur captains and amateurs are basically kind of middle, well, people, upper class people who are, in theory unpaid. They often receive expenses that are worth far more than professionals. But you have this sort of two tier system where amateurs will have different changing rooms and so on, and they are seen as the sort of right sort of people in inverted commas to be the captains. And England actually really hurt themselves because they pick again and again people who aren't even worth their place in the team to be captain and say australia do not. And that gives Australia this disadvantage. You know, it's said that England picked the captain first and then the rest of the team, whereas Australia picked the best 11 players and then picked the captain from that. And there's a lot of truth in that. So that's from England's point of view where Sydney's is where this is most sinister, really, and most obvious. So until 19, so West Indies play their first Test match in 1928, but until 1960 they have a policy of white captains, basically. So they only pick white people to be captain. And the reason is blatant, which is that the people who run West Indies Cricket. So West Indies, I should say IS it comprises 16 nations and territories in the British Caribbean. Barbados.
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D
It's not a phrase you hear much outside of sportroom. It feels quite antiquated.
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A
West Indies.
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D
But in cricket, you know, that's the team.
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A
Yeah, well you only have a West Indies, you have a West Indies in cricket and you have a University of West Indies and that's it. So it is this. Yeah, this sort of artificial construct in many ways. But the people who run West Indies cricket, they maintain this white captaincy policy until 1960. And again they're picking people in fact that, you know, I show in the book that they are picking the white pairs on average are a lot worse than the non white players. But they want to pick at least sort of four white players in the team because they want to maintain this control, basically. And they hate the idea of basically a team with a black captain going on to beat England and so on. So when they do beat England in 1950, they still have a white captain. And this is seen as, it's almost used by the, I guess the old plantation class as a sign that West Indies, they're not ready for independence as nations because they still need the white people to be in control. So it really has this deeply sinister political edge to it. CLR James, who's a leading, well he's a political activist, he's a Marxist historian, so he is very, very actively involved in a campaign to have a black captain. And he sees the connection and the importance for this well beyond cricket. And then in 1960, Westinis finally do have a black captain for the first time. Frank Worrell is appointed as full time captain. Let's say there had been George Headley had done the job as a one off once before, but to having it full time like captain is seen as like the big thing. This happens the first time in 1960, Worrell does it, does a brilliant job. He leads Resinius to be one on one for the first time ever. And there is this broad symbolic importance which transcends cricket. And then you have only two years after World was appointed, Jamaica and Trinidad gain independence, becoming the first Caribbean nations to gain independence. So there is and CLR James and others all see the link in this process. So cricket has this deeply political importance. I think that the captain is historically the most obvious sign of that. And it's also this continued discrepancy in cricket where you tend to have the captains are batsmen. And yes, it's true that bowling is more tiring and so on, but it almost goes back to historically being a batsman is kind of less hard work and historically you'd get more privileged people would want to be batsmen and get other people to be bowlers. So you see this in England where you get traditionally the batsmen and often the captains are kind of from the south and so on. In West Indies you have historically when you had the white captaincy policy, you'd normally have the captains, the captains would. The white captains would be batsman as well. And so yeah, you do get strands of society really do play out and test cricket in very odd ways, but undeniable ways.
- [25:52]
D
You just casually dropped in earlier that you'd interviewed Sachin Tendulkar, probably the greatest Indian cricketer of all time. You've done an incredible amount of interview for this. A lot of research went into it. Do any interviews particularly jump out? Were any particularly special?
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A
Michael holding was a fantastic person to interview. So holding was one of the kind of great West Indies players in the 70s and 80s from yeah, great Fossboil from Jamaica and also very acutely aware of the team's wider importance. So you know, when Sydney's had this kind of all conquering team in the 1980s, it was very important, it had a deep importance for black empowerment. And he said actually especially oddly when they were in England this was particularly the case because they would have often friends who had moved to England Windrush 1948 and after and experienced really bad racism there. And so when West Indians would go to England and crush England, it had this deep kind of resonance really. And that was very kind of very moving to hear about that. And the sense that actually the deeds of this cricket team were helping people to kind of walk a bit taller and just actually help people in their lives. And actually yeah, often in pretty tough lives not being treated well after moving halfway across the world. But this sort of sporting team doing so well was a real source of joy. That was a fascinating interview. Plus also the, you know, from a more quickity point of view, the kind of, just the kind of thrill of bowling fast, being able to bowl 90 miles an hour and what that feels like. And actually the knowledge that you can inflict this great, I mean great physical peril on people you're bowling to. It's quite uncomfortable. But often the best and most compelling test cricket there has been this sense of kind of physical threat, this fear because until the late 70s people didn't wear helmets. Even so you'd have, you know, guy boy, 90 miles down, you have to stray out the way it's really. It's terrifying, but it's compelling to watch. We see this now. A few years ago, you saw this with Joffre Archer, Steve Smith at Lords. Yeah, I think people do, yeah. I think the image of cricket, Test cricket, sometimes people forget there's this gladiatorial aspect to it with the fast bowlers and the batsman, and that is quite different to the stereotypes of cricket. But it's often produced some absolutely unmissable action. And Steele's cricket has this odd balancing act where no one wants it to be dangerous, but there is this kind of uncomfortable truth that a bit of danger can often make some of the most exciting viewing. And this is the kind of true people don't really like to acknowledge, necessarily.
- [28:39]
D
And your book talks about how all these new nations joined Test cricket. So Pakistan, New Zealand, even more recently Ireland and Afghan. But is it sort of in a place where, yes, more and more of these countries do play Test cricket? But actually, I mean, you spoke earlier about the big three of Australia, India and England are dominant.
- [28:57]
A
Yeah. So the problem that Test cricket faces is it's never really the easiest comparison to make would actually be American sports. So, you know, the NFL has its motto of any given Sunday, which is basically that anyone can meet anyone on any given day. And the idea of competitive balance is kind of wired into that competition. And actually, all American sports, Test cricket has not through things like revenue sharing, equal fixture lists and all these things. Test cricket has never taken that approach at all. It's always really been organized on an ad hoc, quite a quaint basis, where England play the Ashes over five matches, but they only play New Zealand over two matches or whatever, doesn't really make much sense. And you reach a situation where the biggest countries just want to play against each other really as much as possible, because that's where they earn as much money as possible. And you don't have any symmetry in fixtures or in what people are paid and so on. And so if a game doesn't involve Australia, England or India, most Test matches lose half a million US dollars, if not more. So you have this incredible thing where most matches are losing money, which is just like, yeah, really an extraordinary fat. And revenue is not really being shared around in a meaningful way. I mean, yes, there is some, but not in a way to actually allow countries to play enough. So you have it now. You have a World Test Championship, which was a really good innovation launch in 2019. So for the first time, you have like a final every two years, like a World cup kind of but which that's an improvement. But it's complete mess how you get there. So some countries like England might pay twice as much as others in the league stages. And the point system is a complete mess, like unfathomable even to me. And to work in this thing, it's just, it's so confusing. So. And then you have Slavka actually won it this year. But then that felt like quite a.
- [30:49]
D
Big moment because it was a surprise.
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A
Or because then they're not paying the single test matches at home in their whole next next season. So this very odd, odd situation.
- [30:59]
D
And that's because of money. That's because it's not worth it.
- [31:02]
A
Yeah. Because they don't have people to play against who they can make money off this year basically. And they're playing some shorter format stuff instead. And it's a real mess. And these sorts of things keep happening again and again and again. And so the question is, how can test cricket devise a sort of a structure that encourages all the best players to play in it? And actually it shouldn't be that difficult. You need two or three months a year. You just have test matches, you have a fund where you guarantee players kind of the minimum wage to play in these games. And you say everyone plays eight games USA when they're at full strength for the league. And then other countries can play extra games outside this structure against each other to earn more money. But there's this kind of core framework in place, it shouldn't be that hard to devise. But there's been a complete lack of will from the bigger countries in devising this, which means you threaten to get a hollowing out where the kind of odd paradox where the teams who are weaker anyway are more likely to be weakened further by having players who are unavailable. So the strongest teams in England, you're never going to have players who are unavailable because their players will always be able to play and want to play because the amount they can earn and so on and so on. So this all needs to be addressed. And actually, yeah, test cricket should learn from American sports, which is another thing to be saying, but American sports have always recognized the balls of competitive balance and that basic sense of jeopardy and excitement about what you're watching because it's not a foregone conclusion. And I suppose also with Test, the fact it's such a, you know, the kind of, yeah, we talked about the long nature of it and stuff, that actually that just means if it's one sided, it's really tedious for a long Long time. It's not fun. Seeing a team get 600 for four and then bowl opposition out for 200. That's just not actually fun for anybody.
- [32:56]
D
Yeah, it seems that was something unique to Test cricket is you can be losing for, like, two whole days and the end is inevitable, but you have to just keep going. You know, in other sports it might be like an hour, but in Test cricket, it can just be days.
- [33:07]
A
I think there's also something unique in terms of the fandom of Test cricket, where I think, you know, more people who watch Test cricket secretly or not so secretly, they're quite like the opposition's to win, or at least to do very well than in other sports.
- [33:20]
D
There's a lot of that. When India in England this summer, there's a lot of sort of English writers saying, oh, isn't it fantastic that India won the last thing and it was a draw because it was great for the game more broadly. Yeah.
- [33:29]
A
But even for fans who are going, they want to go and see a contest and, you know, you often get, you know, amazing applause from home fans and the way a player does in a way you don't really get in other sports. So there is this sense of kind of this fraternity of Test cricket almost, which is why almost that you need to give the fans more credit. I don't think the fans want to watch. It's also. It's not fun to go to a game and go, oh, we're going to beat these guys, because their three best players are playing in a league instead of them not playing for them. There's no real satisfaction in that.
- [34:00]
D
They're almost this fraternity, because it all feels a little bit fragile and we're all kind of in it together, trying to support this thing even if we don't lose.
- [34:07]
A
I think that's. That's part of it, this fear. But I think. I think it's also just a sense that if you like test cricket, the tribalism is quite a limited part of that appeal, I think, compared to other sports. Just because it's to commit to a game that can be 30 hours long, you're not going to be committing to it just because of that kind of. That thrill of winning. There's so many different layers. I think also the different layers of Test cricket are interesting, so you can enjoy on a kind of aesthetic level, in terms of just the purity of the geometry, almost of, you know, someone playing a nice. A nice drive or great bowling action. There's the kind of romantic element of underdog victories. So on. There's a numerical element as well, which you get a bit like you get in baseball, but you get, you can enjoy through the prism of stats and every. Because I mean every ball has having a little impact on someone's stats somewhere and there's, there's in a way that's not true in play football, something on the screen you always get a sense of records and someone is about to get more sun trees than someone else. So there's this sense also of current fit to always being compared to the past. So there's this kind of, this common thread through it as well, which actually the players have a sense of awareness of as well. So you have all these different elements and the tribe element is, yes, it's there and it's certainly there in the Ashes, but I think it's a smaller part of test root fandom than fandom in most other sports.
- [35:26]
D
I think one of the reasons I really like cricket is this is slightly odd and kind of idiosyncratic culture around it. And if you follow the live texts on the Telegraph or the BBC or wherever else, there's some quite weird stuff going on like jokes and in jokes and it's just quite a. I don't know, it doesn't really exist in any other sport. In the same way. Is that because there's just large periods of inaction?
- [35:46]
A
Well, I think there's a couple of things going on. I think partly because the nature of test cricket, a lot of it happens when people are actually at work, which is partly a kind of economic problem where lots of people are actually big fans of test cricket and probably don't contribute that much financially to its well being. Which is why I always say actually that just like if you go to commercial theatre, if a few quid of your ticket is going to subsidise Shakespeare, if you don't go to Shakespeare, you're probably actually quite happy with that as a sort of tacit arrangement. I think with cricket the same applies as well. If you go to a T20 match and you think a few quid of your ticket is actually going to test cricket and to maintain that, you're quite happy with that as well. And that's why actually, you know, Cruja having three formats is because it has 50 over gain, the kind of awkward middle sibling as well, it's often seen as a negative. I think it can be a strength and it should be seen as a strength, but you need all three to kind of work together. Also sort of T20 needs to be shorter than something else. It's kind of raison d'. Etre. So tests and T20 can kind of help each other. And I think there is a sense that most of the best players in one actually still the best in another. And I think there is a sense of that. I think yet more money from T20 should be used to subsidize the Test game. Yeah, that is something that misery should think about. About more. But I also think. Yeah, so I suppose between each ball you get a gap of 20 or 30 seconds, which does allow for these little thoughts and stuff. But I think a lot of people enjoy, often enjoy Test matches as a kind of background noise for a large chunk of them.
- [37:20]
D
Well, otherwise you wouldn't do anything else, would you? You certainly wouldn't have a job.
- [37:22]
A
And it's a kind of a comforting thing. And then you will. When the bits are really exciting, you'll fully commit. But I think it's nice. I think lots of people like the idea that they're at work or something and they might have a sly tab open and they can see the score ticking over. Well, slowly, although quickly. And if it's England in their current inception of playing, and it's kind of a comforting idea, and this is why. Yeah. So the kind of fandom of Test cricket is a very, very special, very distinct to other games, because as you said, England will play, say, 15 matches a year, and if each game is five days, say it goes to four days, even that's still 60 days a year, of 60 days a year. Six, six, seven hours a day. That's like 400 hours. You're not going to be. Yeah, no one's able to commit to that.
- [38:08]
D
Is there anything that you learned doing this book, anything that jumps out from your research, your interviews that you really didn't know before that surprised you as someone immersed in this world?
- [38:17]
A
I think there's this great idea of Tesrek as such a conservative game. And obviously you see that you go to laws each year and you see members trying to get in their bacon and egg ties and they're trying to get in the same seats every year and everyone's in white. And of course it feels like this thing doesn't change, but actually this is Test track has evolved much more than people realize. You just sort of take a step back. So you've gone from two nations to 12. The pitches have changed massively. So it used to be you would get rain on these pitches and it would change them altogether. Now having cover, now we have cover wickets, the unpassed Decision used to be just a kind of immutable fat. Now you can challenge it. You have day, night matches now, which means you have a pink ball sometimes, so the ball's not even always red anymore. You have a world Test championship now, so you have a league structure for the first time. The number of days of play has gone actually from three to unlimited and everything in between, basically. Number of boards in and over has gone from being 4, 5, 6 and 8. So actually, test rocket has evolved more than people realize and that's maybe part of a secret to why it survived for 148 years so far. So that's one of the things, the sheer. And also the sheer fatalism. Right. The kind of people talk about the Golden Age in the belle epoch just before World War I, but even then people are terrified about attendances and interest and almost like attention spans.
- [39:42]
D
Right.
- [39:43]
A
Things we talk about now. So these fears have always been there and yet Test cricket has actually evolved a little bit more than its image suggests. I think that's one of the kind of. That was one of the biggest takeaways, actually, and kind of the comforting one. So I probably ended the project a little more optimistic about the future of testracket than when I started coming into the Ashes.
- [40:05]
D
It's certainly not the best Australian team of all time, but it is in Australia. England don't win in Australia very often. Can England win the Ashes?
- [40:12]
A
Yes. I mean, England have last three seasons in Australia been 130 to Australia, so huge chasm there. England are a better team now. Australia probably a slightly worse team, but those things can be true. And it'd still be very difficult for England to win. So my prediction would still be 3:1 to Australia. With it raining as it always does in Sydney, I could talk about this.
- [40:33]
D
For hours, but we've got to leave it there. Tim, thank you very much. That was Tim Wigmore, author of Test A History. It's holding it aloft. It is a fantastic book. I've read it. I read it as an accompaniment to the India England series this summer. I'd strongly recommend it as an accompaniment to the Ashes this winter. So much kind of context that will make you understand the modern game so much better. Blue Research has interviewed so many interesting people. It's online, it's in bookshops. I've been Joey Durso. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [41:04]
C
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Volparto and it was edited by Mark Roberts for ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future events, head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full live events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
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