Cricket trend 4: The volume of men’s Tests and ODIs will fall

The most prestigious men’s Test series, particularly The Ashes, will continue to thrive and the men’s ODI World Cup in 2023 will attract larger crowds than the previous ODI World Cup matches in India 12 years earlier. At the same time, both the Test and ODI formats will be played less often, driven by the following factors:

Financial pressure

Test cricket is expensive. When cancelling a one-off match against Bangladesh in 2019, Cricket Ireland’s Chief Executive, Warren Deutrom, identified around €1 million of costs in an interview with the Irish Times “with little expectation of creating revenue streams to cover the costs”.

The number of Test matches peaked at 55 per year in 2001 and 2002 and we’ve not seen more than 50 in a calendar year since 2004.

When the ICC’s Future Tours Programme was issued in 2018 it promised up to 57 Test matches in 2021, including five involving newcomers Afghanistan and Ireland. This always looked ambitious and the Covid-19 crisis has driven up costs at the same time as impacting revenues. The number of Tests will be far lower as a consequence.

The next significant commercial marker for Test and ODI cricket will be the sale of media rights for Indian international cricket for the period starting in 2023. The media value of the IPL has already overtaken the international game in India and the gap will grow wider next time around.

On being awarded the Indian international rights in 2018, the Star India Chairman, Uday Shankar said: “No matter how popular other tournaments might be, associating with national cricket has a special significance.”

Shankar is no longer in charge at Disney-owned Star. The larger this gap grows, the more this sentiment is likely to be tested within the sport’s biggest funders.

Sporting priorities

The number of Test matches has, unsurprisingly, almost always been lower in ODI World Cup years as teams focus on their preparations and spend nearly two months at the tournament. There were only 40 Test matches when England hosted and won the men’s ODI World Cup in 2019 and 39 Tests in 2011.

There are also signs of a shift away from men’s ODIs towards more T20 international matches in the build-up to each men’s T20 World Cup. Covid-19 has made it a little harder to call this trend definitively but England’s tour of South Africa in February this year was the first to feature an even number of ODI and T20 games and India was scheduled to play more T20s than ODIs in 2021 before the pandemic struck.

The ICC has worked hard to preserve a balanced calendar of Test and ODI cricket. After several iterations of rankings and leagues, the current competition structures - a Test Championship and ODI Super League - are the best yet. On paper they provide regular competition for all the top teams and context for every match. Unfortunately Covid-19 has seriously undermined both competitions and the Test Championship in particular may not be given the time it so badly needs to bed in.

The international calendar has also been squeezed by the IPL. In the past two decades, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and West Indies have all hosted Test matches in April or May but, since 2018, only England has staged Test cricket during this period.

International expansion

Test and ODI cricket contribute very little to the globalisation of cricket in their current structure. There have been only five new men’s teams allowed to play Test cricket in the past 60 years and the most recent ODI World Cups included only 10 men’s teams and eight women’s teams.

Afghanistan is the only new country to have qualified for the men’s ODI World Cup since 2007. If the current structure is retained, we might have to wait two decades or more to see another new country make it through to the format’s showpiece event.

At present the front runners are Oman, Nepal and USA. Of these three countries, only the USA has ever played ODIs against any of the current top 10 - two best-forgotten one-sided games against Australia and New Zealand in the 2004 ICC Champions Trophy. The opportunities and incentives for these nations to play more ODIs are low.

Within four years of becoming the 10th country permitted to play Test cricket in June 2000, Bangladesh had contested over 30 Tests, winning none of them, and - during the same period - almost 50 ODIs, winning one.

It was a painful start supported by significant investment and patience but two decades later Bangladesh is ranked ninth in Test cricket, seventh in ODI cricket and eighth in Twenty20. We will never see another nation granted as much time and financial support to pursue this multi-format growth trajectory.

Indeed the Chief Executive of USA Cricket, Iain Higgins, was spot on when he told SportsPro recently: “We believe that Twenty20 cricket is the format best suited to growing the sport, not just in this country, but in any market around the world... We respect the importance of ODI status and want to continue to be competitive there, but we can have a real expeditious growth pattern in T20 cricket, and we think that’s the way we are going to galvanise and engage the fans in this country, and that we’re going to see more rapid performance gains by our national teams.”

-------

In spite of the current challenges, I’m optimistic about cricket’s future prosperity and sustainability. From a commercial point of view the following trends will help drive this:

1. The IPL will grow and grow

2. Private investment, ownership and influence will increase

3. Competition and format innovation outside India will continue, including domestic/multi-market leagues

4. The volume of men’s Tests and ODIs will fall

5. Women’s cricket will grow in value

I'm developing a resource for people working or interested in cricket that will track these trends and more.

If you would like to know more or even contribute, let me know.