Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, which last week became the 100th venue to host a Test match, is as picturesque as its euphonious name suggests: snug, tree-fringed, with the river Taff at one end and a pub called Y Mochyn Du (The Black Pig) at the other. Yet for all its old-fashioned airs, the ground may contain a glimpse of the future.
There was considerable controversy three years ago when the ECB recognised its second geographical jurisdiction by granting Glamorgan County Cricket Club the right to a Test, at the expense of traditional venues like Old Trafford and Trent Bridge. The Ashes of 2005 opened at Lord’s in front of a crowd that loosened its collective egg-and-bacon tie to roar the home side on; the sequel has commenced in a stadium cradling a cosy 16 000 people.
The inaugural Test match in Wales owed much to the favour of the Welsh Assembly and the Wales Tourist Board, which stumped up £3 million for a top-to-bottom refurbishment of what had been a fairly rudimentary county arena. The clincher was then Glamorgan’s guarantee of a £3.2 million profit—more than twice the best figure on offer elsewhere— and the rest is very recent history.
Disgruntled rival counties have since forced a revision of the Test match bidding process that expedited the Welsh bid. But the Welsh are very pleased with their Test, as well they might be, First Minister Rhodri Morgan describing it as a ‘fantastic success’ and prophesising: ‘Whatever happens to the series and whatever the final result I think Wales was the winner.’
What about the rest of us? For all its aesthetic appeal, Cardiff still seems an incongruously low-key location for a Test match, least of all in Test cricket’s one remaining marquee series since the suspension of competition between India and Pakistan. Its financial strength derives from a high proportion of corporate and hospitality seating, which takes up at least a quarter of the ground. Just after lunch on Thursday, when Andrew Flintoff was bowling a riveting, don’t-look-away-now spell at 93 miles per hour to Phillip Hughes, the seats in front of the dining suites were deserted. The guests must have been dining on braised unicorn and ambrosia to prefer it to the feast of cricket in the middle.
The Barmy Army, the happy-go-lucky gang of supporters who rejoiced at England’s every success four years ago and made them seem like a team of twelve, have barely been heard from: a chorus or two here, a bugle blast there. Rather than enhance the sense of drama, recourse to highlights of 2005 at any opportunity has tended to evince the relative serenity of proceedings.
What has happened in the intervening period? For one thing, English cricket is now broadcast on pay television, Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB, which almost four years ago made a knockout bid for rights that sent the BBC packing after sixty-one years. The argument was that the additional money would tend to the beneficiation of grass-roots cricket, and there is evidence that sizeable investments have been made. But the unquantifiable contraction of the audience has exacerbated a tendency to conceive of Test cricket as an exclusive game, for hardcore tragics only.
The other development has been Twenty20 cricket, which the English are apt to point out they invented, but which the IPL has since popularised and industrialised far more effectively. English cricket authorities have scrambled to keep up. Their plans for an England Premier League were foiled when their backer, Texan Allen Stanford, went the way of the South Sea Bubble; two quasi-domestic competitions are now mooted for next season.
The size of English grounds, none with a capacity greater than 30 000, has tended to preserve Test match attendance as a minority pursuit. In his recent autobiography, England’s opening batsman Alastair Cook reveals that the only Test he had attended before his international debut in Nagpur was an Australia v Pakistan Match at the WACA while he was playing Perth grade cricket. With Twenty20 viewed as the more accessible and demotic version of the game, Cardiff suggests that Test cricket is to be repackaged permanently as a boutique entertainment, partly funded by £100 tickets and corporate dining suites, but subsidised chiefly by television. Which is fine as long as Test match broadcasting rights are bundled with those of Twenty20 and one-day internationals—but for how much longer will that be?
All of which makes a good story about English decadence and dilettantism, but it also has profound implications elsewhere, for it threatens to leave Australia as the last country in which Test matches, the oldest, longest and most satisfyingly complex form of cricket, are taken seriously as a mass amusement.
On 7 July, Sri Lanka and Pakistan finished one of the best Test matches of recent times, Pakistan losing eight for 46 to subside to a 50-run defeat. The final rites were watched by 2000 people. But the malaise in other countries is a familiar tale; we have always banked on the Ashes’ continuing relevance and popularity. Australia remains Test cricket’s number one nation. The question is not: for how much longer? It is: for how much longer will that matter?