In his introduction to Test Cricket A History, creator Tim Wigmore says the book is “meant to be read sequentially, as narrative history.” It is useful recommendation for taking up 539-pages of a timeline which covers nearly 150 years. Test cricket nuts might learn it in any method they like. Back to entrance, sideways or a languorous cherry-pick of themes, occasions, personalities via 35 chapters and as soon as once more fall head over heels with this capricious, alluring sporting type. Which might seem archaic and out-of-step however has been, as Wigmore reveals and tells, adaptive and reflective of its time.
It is cricket that held the primary officially-recognised worldwide sporting contest. Ever. USA vs Canada, Manhattan 1844. Everything — world cups, continental championships, globalised sporting hoo-ha, Olympic medals tables, bitter nationwide rivalries — solely sprang into life later.
Enough preening. That Manhattan match over three days was not thought-about a Test — that got here solely 33 years later — however that factoid wanted an airing. The length of Tests has gone from three to 4 to 5 days to timeless (on until 1945 in Australia). Today they seem like three-day high-speed confrontations with a lot mulling over returning to a four-days format. Again.
Falling attract?
In March 2026 when it’ll hit 150, Test cricket faces maybe its roughest tide. Earlier this 12 months, the World Cricketers Association launched its annual report and participant survey findings interviewing 328 gamers, female and male, largely worldwide. Forty-nine per cent of them believed that Test cricket is a very powerful format to play in. The bracket that adopted was this: the 49% was “down from 86% in 2019.”
Over the final six years, the relevance of Test cricket has fallen to only under half amongst its very practitioners. The format might have usually been suspected of dying each decade however we’re maybe at its most crucial second and never merely as a result of it’s up towards a shorter format. That has occurred earlier than — with 50-over cricket and one-day internationals. Today, it’s Twenty20 franchise cricket that has burgeoning business worth and widespread enchantment amongst gamers and its viewers. The prospect of T20 consuming into chunks off the worldwide calendar, changing bilateral with franchise competitors and hoovering up younger expertise could be very actual. Cricket hinges its international ambitions on T20 because it returns to the Olympics in Los Angeles 2028. We have been right here earlier than and Wigmore has proof that we — aka directors — stuffed it.
At the flip of the century the United States was “almost certainly among the four strongest cricket nations” (plus Australia, England and Canada) at the same time as the sport grew in Argentina. “Through the mixture of neglect and deliberate exclusion, the chance to develop a bigger and more geographically diverse game was lost.” The inclusive, expansive world view of the book must be the lens via which Test cricket can sort out the last decade forward. Not the (*150*) Three cling-wrapping themselves and Tests into tinier and tinier cliques.
Fresh eyes
The book’s greatest asset is that it’s a 150-year-old story advised via a younger voice. Wigmore, 34, has grown up with twenty first century cricket and is free of the love and loathings of the earlier century. Little is taken into account ‘holy’ and subsequently, even much less is deemed tainted. This frees the book of many drained first-world readings of points which have divided the sport and the refusal to look objectively at T20.
Take one random instance: there are sufficient references of how poor umpiring affected outcomes and careers and subsequently neither impartial umpiring nor DRS (determination overview system) is anathema. Wigmore tells of a Royal Statistical Society paper which analysed Tests between 1986 to 2012: with two house umpires, visiting groups have been 16% extra prone to be given out lbw. With one house and one impartial the determine fell to 10% and with two neutrals 1%. The book is full of such gems. Like how scientists have proved that swing bowling has little or no to do with cloud cowl.
Reverse swing, with or with out bestial ball tampering, “has aided one of the most beguiling sights in Test cricket.” Then there’s the chucking controversy that demonised Muthiah Muralitharan at prime quantity. Only for sports activities labs to find that bowlers with even essentially the most ‘pure’ actions have been additionally ‘bent’ which then led to a change within the legislation. The commonly-bandied false-ism is that this was accomplished ‘to accommodate Murali’. The truth is that the legislation was found to be outmoded and wanted a contemporary benchmark.
These are just some slices of the feast supplied by this vibrant, international history of the oldest type of cricket. Told throughout many years and huge spans of geography, utilizing history, memoir, stats, science and the voices of greats residing and gone, it’s destined to be a basic. Test Cricket is in a phrase, monumental. If you’re searching for two, add terrific.
The reviewer spent three many years reporting sport for varied organisations, however now follows and writes about sport on her personal phrases.
Test Cricket A History
Tim Wigmore
Hachette India
₹899
Published – May 26, 2025 03:25 pm IST
