Test cricket has been very entertaining last two years AFTER England's
bazball invention and some upsets, bowler friendly pitches, incentives
to WIN matches in terms of WTC points and teams becoming slightly more aggressive in batting etc.

==================================================================

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/give-it-up-for-2024-test-cricket-has-had-few-better-years-1463338

Give it up for 2024: Test cricket has had few better years

The five-day game has produced exciting, sometimes astonishing, results
all through the last 12 months

Sidharth Monga

Let's admit it, cricket fans. We have a moaning problem. In the year
2024, we have had at least two former Test captains, influential voices
both, call for two tiers in Test cricket. Ravi Shastri did it at an
event organised by MCC, the body that governs the laws of cricket.
Michael Vaughan voiced his opinion in the aftermath of a one-sided win
for England against Sri Lanka at Lord's only for England to be defeated
the following week at The Oval. The underlying assumption is that only a couple of teams are worthy of playing the best three or four teams in
the world.

And I see y'all. Vaughan and Shastri are far from being the only ones to
run down Test cricket. Thousands of you have agreed. I see the feedback
when we are doing live commentary here at ESPNcricinfo. I myself have
had a whinge when India were beating Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka all too
easily in 2017.

Running down Test cricket seems to have become an industry, and lack of competitiveness is the stick usually used to beat it with. Test cricket
might have 99 problems in a world with many more entertainment options
than before, but competitiveness or quality or depth are not among them.
Not in big 2024.

This wonderful year has been one of the best for this format of the
sport. It began with India winning a Test in Cape Town, their only win
there and only the second defeat for the hosts at their fortress in the
last ten years. Almost simultaneously, on a glorious January day, West
Indies and England upset the formidable hosts Australia and India in
Brisbane and Hyderabad. A dynasty was brought down when New Zealand whitewashed India in India, the hosts' first home series defeat in 12
years. India quickly bounced back to win in Perth to consign Australia
to their first defeat at that stadium. Bangladesh beat Pakistan in
Pakistan, and have just scored a historic win in the West Indies.

There has been only one draw in the whole year, and that was thanks to
the Trinidad weather. Even there, South Africa and West Indies were so enterprising they were just 97 runs or five wickets short of a result.
Runs have been scored quicker in 2024 than in any other year. Wickets
have never fallen quicker in a year since 1907.

Not long ago fears were expressed about the future of the game in Sri
Lanka and South Africa. Both sides have allayed fears of irrelevance by
virtue of their bowlers, and not superstar batters. At the time of
writing, Sri Lanka hold the joint-best win-loss ratio this year, and
South Africa are odds-on favourites to make the World Test Championship
final.

The WTC, for which the points system is fairly straightforward, has reinvigorated teams' commitment to winning. Incentives for drawing Tests
have almost disappeared. At times this push to get the most points from
home Tests has resulted in interesting pitches that tend to bring the opposition bowlers into the game, which was certainly the case in Pune,
Mumbai and Perth, where much more established home attacks were
outgunned by inexperienced units. Current-day pitches have made away
teams much more competitive: the win-loss ratio for away teams was 1.125
in 2021 and is 0.826 in 2024. These two years were great for touring
teams; you need to go back more than a decade to find a year with a
better win-loss ratio. And both of these are WTC years, a sign that the
Test tournament has delivered despite unavoidable flaws.

In a way, Test cricket has responded to the times by dropping some of
the flab. It is getting to the point quicker. No more the first two or
three days of run-making in Asia and then relying on the pitch to break
up for a result. The WTC has only hastened a trend that began in the mid-2010s.

Let's not forget that athletes, as a rule, will keep getting better with
time. Diets, training, sports science all improve to produce better,
fitter, stronger players, especially bowlers. Almost every team has a
larger pool of bowlers than they did in whatever glorious era exists in
our nostalgia. No more seeing off the new ball and then feasting on a
drop in bowling intensity and quality. Dynasties like the ones that
Australia built with two record-winning streaks in the 2000s are
difficult to sustain now, not because Australia have got worse but
because the competition has almost always become tougher.

A bit like how Test cricket has not become weaker, but its competition
from other sources of entertainment, including from within cricket, has
become stronger. All is, of course, not well with Test cricket. Along
with all the good that came about, this was also a year in which South
Africa sent a second-string team to New Zealand, not because of a player strike but because they needed their main players to play the domestic
T20 league owned by Cricket South Africa. The recent Durban Test against
Sri Lanka played out to hardly any crowds at all. West Indies continue
to fail to attract the best athletes in the islands to cricket.

Most governing bodies continue to keep Test cricket inaccessible. During
the Perth Test, Indian fans couldn't believe their luck when Cricket
Australia put out easily accessible highlights and clips packages of the performances of Jasprit Bumrah, Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal. They
are not used to this during Tests in India. Unlike in baseball and
basketball, where open access to advanced data and footage gives fans a
sense of ownership of the sport, cricket continues to shoot itself in
the foot by remaining exclusivist to its teams and unfriendly to its consumers.

And yet the sport and its practitioners continue to be resilient,
forever evolving to make sure the longest format gets the best of them
at most times. This year is no accident; it is a consequence of the
quality and depth in the playing field. And 2024 is not even over yet;
the greatest rivalry of our times is yet to play itself out along with
South Africa's push for a WTC final slot.








--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)