Since the Indian Premier League launched in 2008, it has been possible to imagine a dystopian future for Test cricket: a game effectively restricted to failed T20 cricketers. When South Africa arrive in New Zealand for next month’s Test series, a glimpse of that future will arrive.
Before South Africa’s selectors picked their squad, they had to discount 77 players. These men, the most in-demand T20 players in the country, will all be playing in the SA20, the country’s T20 league, instead. So while South Africa are trying to protect their remarkable undefeated record against New Zealand in Test series, Kagiso Rabada and Aiden Markram will be 7,000 miles away, turning out for MI Cape Town and Sunrisers Eastern Cape.
It is a myth that Test cricket’s primacy has never been challenged before. From the great Learie Constantine missing West Indies matches because Nelson, his Lancashire League club, would not release him in 1933, the history of Test cricket has often been of awkward co-existence with domestic leagues. In 1977-79, the entire sport fractured, with scores of leading players signing up for World Series Cricket, Kerry Packer’s breakaway league, leaving a rump behind to play official Tests.
And so the dynamics South Africa face are not quite as new as they appear. But what is new is that these absences are the result of a board cannibalising its own Test team: Cricket South Africa has mandated that players feature in the SA20. It is akin to the Football Association scheduling England international matches to clash with the Premier League – and then declaring that anyone who had a Premier League contract was ineligible.
The upshot is that South African Test cricket continues its alarming retrenchment. Since readmission in 1992, South Africa’s win-loss record is second only to Australia. From 2006-15, the side went nine years without losing a single away series, rising to world No 1; Graeme Smith dethroned England Test captains with the ruthlessness that the 1922 Committee reserves for Conservative prime ministers. Yet, as SA20 commissioner, Smith now runs a competition that has led South Africa to field a depleted Test team.
Cricket South Africa lost £13million from 2021-23
The weakness of the rand and a dearth of sponsors impede what South Africa can generate from hosting international cricket. Indeed, most international cricket only stretches Cricket South Africa further: the board lose money against all opponents bar the big three. From 2021-23, Cricket South Africa lost £13million.
Such financial strife is increasingly making Test cricket a luxury that South Africa cannot afford. Between 2023 and 2026, the Proteas will exclusively play two-match Test series.
Similar disregard for the red-ball game is detectable at domestic level. Since 2019, the number of first-class matches for each side in South Africa’s top division has fallen from 10 to seven. “They’ve got to play more first-class cricket,” says Russell Domingo, South Africa’s former coach who now coaches the Lions in the domestic game. “It comes down to finances. When you cut those costs there’s going to be a drop in standards.”
But, for all the exasperation at South Africa’s depleted squad in New Zealand – an event the board maintains will be a one-off – there is also grim acceptance of the new reality. “SA20 has to happen because it is the lifeblood of South African cricket,” said Shukri Conrad, South Africa’s Test coach. “If it doesn’t happen, we are not going to have Test cricket anyway.” Such words reflect the new truth in South African cricket; everything else now fits around SA20, the one non-negotiable piece of the country’s calendar.
Yet if some of South Africa’s issues are very local, they are a microcosm of the global crisis facing the Test game. Not since 2019 have two countries from outside the ‘big three’ played a three-match Test series against each other.
Test cricket’s plight, then, requires global solutions. Borrowing from football’s approach, windows for the international game would prevent cricketers from choosing between Tests and T20 leagues.
Perhaps the greatest need is to reward Test players better. In franchise cricket, Rabada and co are paid what the market deems that they are worth: £925,000 per IPL season, in his case. Yet Rabada – who has 291 Test wickets at 22.05 apiece, placing him among the finest quick bowlers of all time – is believed to earn in the region of £250,000 a year (six million rand) in total from Cricket South Africa. Players of his standing for Australia, England or India earn five times more from their national boards. While this discrepancy remains, players from the sport’s middle class will continue to respond to market forces, hollowing out the Test game.
England and Australia receive millions more than South Africa
In recent days, Mike Baird, Cricket Australia’s chairman, has at least acknowledged this truth, advocating “increasing Test match payments to make them more competitive”. Making good on such words would entail restoring the Test Cricket Fund to subsidise matches outside the big three, and guaranteeing a minimum wage for players in Tests.
But recent deeds augur less well. Last year, the ICC’s new revenue distribution formula gave 38 per cent of revenue to India; England and Australia also stand to receive millions more than countries like South Africa.
The sadness is that South Africa remains a fecund source of talent; many of the best young cricketers in South Africa still crave playing Test cricket. Dewald Brevis, known as ‘Baby AB’ for his resemblance to De Villiers, was signed by Mumbai Indians aged 18 two years ago; it seemed to signal a new age of South African stars who did not need the five-day game. He has scored two first-class centuries in the last month, indicating his desire to become a Test cricketer too.
But, for players of Brevis’s generation, the lore and mystique of Test cricket will not be enough if they are asked to forego greater earnings elsewhere to play.
Led by a menacing pace attack, South Africa still retain the players to be a terrific Test team. Yet in cricket’s age of fragmentation and flux, talent alone is not enough to thrive in red-ball cricket. Whether the will – at home and especially worldwide – exists to help South African Test cricket has never been less clear.
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