Dear Editor,
The first Test of New Zealand`s current tour of South Africa is suffering the same fate as the fourth Test in Trinidad between India and the West Indies.
They are both victims of seasonal, predictable, rainfall. Since I enjoy the weather in southern Ontario between May and September, I always felt badly about being tempted to leave this area in this period to watch cricket in the Caribbean.
This was not a problem in the past because cricket was usually played in the Caribbean between January and April. In this modern era that is in many respects an era of recklessness; cricket administrators feel that cricket can be played any time. Yet they will not make the changes that common sense requires with regard to the facilities in which the games are played.
There is no doubt that most, if not all, cricket countries can afford the cost of proper covering for an entire cricket field when rain threatens. Only Sri Lanka, one of the poorer countries, has been prepared to make this investment, and only Sri Lanka hires enough labour to deal quickly and efficiently with the situation when the inevitable rain pours.
Cricket administrators recently created a ‘big three’ that could do whatever they pleased about running the game, ostensibly because they are so much better than everyone else.
Yet one of the three has just been whitewashed in a series in Sri Lanka, and Pakistan has just tied a series with another in England, while the most powerful of the three refuses to comply with a rule that the other 9 countries want, that has admittedly improved umpiring.
More important and related to all that has been said above, administrators from those same countries belittle the value of the shorter versions of the same game, both of which versions can be completed in the same day, attract considerably more fans, and are able to provide much higher remuneration for players.
They find it impossible to schedule matches in such a manner that old people can watch their ‘Test’ matches, while the remainder of fans watch the shorter forms, thereby allowing countries to play their best players in all forms of the game, and make more money for all.
Their latest brilliant idea is to create two tiers of ‘Test’ cricket, so the teams that are not doing very well now ‒ which frankly is only one that will remain unnamed ‒ could play among themselves. These people find it impossible to make changes that could, without any doubt, improve the game, because they believe Test cricket is more than a game. It is not recreation, so what does it matter if there is no conclusion to a match. Is there any hope?
Yours faithfully,
Romain Pitt
