by 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 arrives in New Zealand for next month’s Test series, there will be a glimpse of that future.
Before South Africa’s selectors chose their squad, they had to drop 77 players. These men, the most sought-after T20 players in the country, will play in the SA20, the country’s T20 league. So while South Africa try to protect their remarkable unbeaten record against New Zealand in the Test series, Kagiso Rabada and Aiden Markram will be 7,000 miles away, featuring for MI Cape Town and Sunrisers Eastern Cape.
It is a myth that the primacy of Test cricket has never been questioned before. Ever since the great Learie Constantine missed West Indies matches because Nelson, his Lancashire League club, did not release him in 1933, the history of Test cricket has often been one of uneasy coexistence with the domestic leagues. In 1977-79, the entire sport fractured, and dozens of top players signed up for World Series Cricket, Kerry Packer’s breakaway league, leaving a handful behind to play official trials.
Therefore, the dynamic facing South Africa is not as new as it seems. But what is new is that these absences are the result of a board cannibalizing its own Test team: Cricket South Africa has ordered players to feature in the SA20. It is similar to the Football Association scheduling England internationals to coincide with the Premier League and then declaring that anyone on a Premier League contract is ineligible.
The result is that South African Test cricket continues its alarming decline. Since its readmission in 1992, South Africa’s win-loss record is surpassed only by Australia. From 2006 to 2015, the team went nine years without losing a single series away from home, rising to number one in the world; Graeme Smith dethroned England’s Test captains with the cruelty the 1922 Committee reserves for Conservative prime ministers. However, as SA20 commissioner, Smith now heads a competition that has seen South Africa field a depleted Test squad.
Cricket South Africa lost £13m between 2021 and 2023
The weakness of the rand and a shortage of sponsors impede what South Africa can generate by hosting international cricket. In fact, most international cricket only spreads Cricket South Africa further: the board loses money to all opponents except the big three. Between 2021 and 2023, Cricket South Africa lost £13 million.
These financial conflicts are increasingly making Test cricket a luxury that South Africa cannot afford. Between 2023 and 2026, the Proteas will exclusively play two-match Test series.
A similar disdain for the red ball game is detectable nationwide. Since 2019, the number of top-flight matches for each team in South Africa’s top division has fallen from 10 to seven. “They have to play more first-class cricket,” says Russell Domingo, a former South Africa coach who now coaches the Lions in domestic football. “It all comes down to finances. “When those costs are reduced, there will be a drop in standards.”
But for all the exasperation over South Africa’s depleted team in New Zealand – an event the board believes will be a one-off – there is also a 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 that doesn’t happen, we’re not going to have Test cricket anyway.” These words reflect the new truth of South African cricket; everything else now conforms to SA20, the only non-negotiable piece of the country’s calendar.
However, while some of South Africa’s problems are very local, they are a microcosm of the global crisis facing the Test game. Since 2019, two countries outside the ‘big three’ have not played a three-match test series against each other.
Cricket’s plight, then, requires global solutions. Borrowing the approach from football, the windows for international play would prevent cricketers from choosing between Test and T20 leagues.
Perhaps the biggest need is to better reward test players. In franchise cricket, Rabada and company are paid what the market deems them worth: £925,000 per IPL season, in their case. However, Rabada, who has 291 Test wickets at 22.05 each, placing him among the greatest fast bowlers of all time, is believed to earn around £250,000 a year (six million rand) in total. thanks to Cricket South Africa. Players of his caliber in Australia, England or India earn five times more on their national boards. As long as this discrepancy persists, the sport’s middle-class players 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, chairman of Cricket Australia, has at least acknowledged this truth, advocating “increasing payouts for Test matches to make them more competitive.” Living up to those words would mean restoring the Test Cricket Fund to subsidize matches outside the big three and guarantee a minimum wage for players in Tests.
But recent events do not bode well. Last year, the ICC’s new revenue sharing formula gave 38 percent of revenue to India; England and Australia will also receive millions more than countries like South Africa.
The sad thing is that South Africa remains a fertile source of talent; Many of South Africa’s best young cricketers still yearn to play Test cricket. Dewald Brevis, known as ‘Baby AB’ because of his resemblance to De Villiers, was signed by the Mumbai Indians when he was 18 two years ago; It seemed to signal a new era of South African stars who did not need the five-day match. He scored two first-class centuries in the last month, indicating his desire to become a Test cricketer as well.
But for players of Brevis’s generation, the tradition and mystique of Test cricket will not be enough if they are asked to give up bigger earnings elsewhere to play.
Led by a menacing pace attack, South Africa still retain the players to be an excellent Test team. However, in cricket’s era of fragmentation and change, talent alone is not enough to thrive in red-ball cricket. It has never been less clear whether there is the will (in the country and especially around the world) to help South African Test cricket.
