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Tested to the limit

Test cricket. Two teams, representing different nations, compete against one another in a contest of wits, giving of their best, and hoping that they can find some way to prevail. It is a game of strategy and initiative, a game of chess translated onto a sporting battlefield. Or at least, it was, until Hansie Cronje and Nasser Hussain took it upon themselves to change all that two days ago.

Test cricket has undergone a plethora of trials and tribulations. Conditions have changed, Laws have changed, limits on time, overs and conduct have been imposed. Through all that though, the game has remained supreme, sacrosanct even. But no more. England's contrived and hollow victory over South Africa has disgraced the stage to which it aspires. Not a popular view, I know, but risking the ire of fans, media and cricketers alike, I must venture the opinion that a glorious game has been cheapened. Bear with me, even if you disagree, for the pivotal issue, to my mind, is one which has apparently not rated a mention thus far.

Come the morning of the fifth day, this Test match, like countless others before it, was doomed to end in a stalemate. Perhaps not even that, for it had barely begun. Thousands of paying spectators, and countless others who would have tuned in on television worldwide, would have expected nothing more. Instead, they were treated to an exciting day's play, at the end of which there was a winner. For the spectators, it was a win, and with that I have no quibble. The intent to provide enjoyment is one to be applauded. One could question why this lofty ideal is not upheld the other 364 days of each year, but that is a matter for a separate discourse.

The real shame is that the game had to be cheapened in order to entertain. Why could the Test not have been abandoned as a draw and an ODI game played instead, if a single day's entertainment was the primary objective? Cast your minds back to 1971 for a moment, and recall that it was under very similar circumstances that international one-day cricket was born.

It is not my contention that this Test match was turned into a one-day contest, although there is perhaps more than an element of truth in that argument. I do not aim to sway the reader by suggesting that Test cricket is supposed to be a two innings game or that this has made a mockery of statistical analyses.

What happened is even on shaky ground as far as the mere laws of the game are concerned. Typically, the laws have been found to be sufficiently ambiguous, now that they have been tested to their limit, but their intent was never in doubt. Law 14 makes it quite clear that a team may only choose to forfeit it's second innings. However, it also suggests that a team may declare either innings, at any time, and although conventional wisdom and accepted practice suggest that in order to declare an innings closed, it must have opened in the first place, the law does not explicitly state this.

Thus, by ignoring the intent, and applying the letter of the law, the umpires and two captains are able to validate their actions. A gross error of judgement, perhaps, for it is the purpose of the laws to draw those lines which need to be drawn, but in the context of this argument I am willing to overlook even that.

The most disheartening, and for this writer, most disgraceful thing about all this is the fact that the two teams colluded, plain and simple. The two captains got together, and discussed their options. The very moment that happened, this was no longer a Test match. Several observers have likened the double forfeiture (or declaration, whichever takes your fancy) to occasions in years past where teams have declared at scores like 32 for 7, on wet wickets. That comparison is far too simplistic. Declaring at 32 for 7 on a wet wicket is a tactical ploy, devised by a bold strategist, trying to use the conditions and situation to his advantage, and to the opposition's disadvantage.

There was no such strategising here. Instead, two captains got together, and plotted a course of action. Two generals, leading their troops in battle, finding themselves at a stalemate and deciding to work with each other to manufacture a situation in which one of them would at least have an opportunity to gain the ascendancy.

Cronje and Hussain didn't play a game of Test cricket. They colluded to manufacture one. The twelfth man was used to send messages to the opposition captain. The two of them worked out an approximate value for a fair target, and shook hands on it. Instead of two teams paving their own way, battling to outdo each other, they combined forces to create an appropriate scenario, and then worked on it. Hussain, in fact, rejected Cronje's offer to manufacture a result initially, but ten overs into the day's play, having seen how the pitch was behaving, had a rethink, and informed his counterpart that he was "open to offers".

"Test cricket at it's best," opined the South African skipper. Not even close. Entertaining it may well have been, but Test cricket it most certainly was not, and that most glorious of games is much the worse for it.