I grew up believing a Test match was not an event so much as weather: it occupied the house for five days, rearranged meals and made adults argue about leaving grass on a pitch. I still prefer the slow accumulation of pressure to the instant sugar of a league game. That is why I find the usual defence of Test cricket inadequate. Administrators say the format is precious, players call it the pinnacle, broadcasters run sepia montages—and then fixtures are placed on inconvenient dates, ticket information arrives late, grounds offer uneven spectator comfort and pitches sometimes turn the contest into a sprint. Reverence has become a substitute for stewardship. The BCCI’s own international fixtures page is useful for the basic calendar, but a calendar is not a strategy. India has the money and audience to make Test cricket feel consequential at home. If the richest board cannot build a modern Test-going habit, smaller boards have little chance.
A television product needs a ground beneath it
Indian cricket increasingly treats spectators in the stadium as scenery for a broadcast. The television audience matters enormously, but empty seats and confused entry gates transmit their own message: this occasion is optional. A Test crowd needs different care from an IPL crowd. People may attend one session rather than a full day. Families need shade, water, toilets and predictable access. Students need inexpensive tickets and public transport information. Local supporters need to know well in advance which city has the match. Too often sales open late, opaque allocations shrink public inventory and associations appear surprised that workers cannot improvise five free weekdays. I do not demand packed stands on every Tuesday morning. I demand that administrators stop engineering inconvenience and then diagnosing a lack of interest.
One sensible model would sell session tickets, day passes and transferable five-day bundles through a single official platform. Schools and clubs could receive clearly disclosed allocations rather than patronage-based giveaways. Every venue should publish a spectator charter: permitted items, gate times, water availability, refund rules and accessibility provisions. The BCCI could audit compliance and withhold marquee fixtures from associations that repeatedly fail. This is elementary event management, yet cricket governance hides behind federal structure whenever accountability becomes awkward. The board has no difficulty setting exacting standards for broadcast production or sponsor visibility. It can discover equal firmness about a clean toilet.
Competitive pitches are not an act of disloyalty
Home advantage belongs in Test cricket. Conditions are part of its intellectual richness, and India should not prepare English surfaces to win approval from touring pundits. But there is a difference between a pitch that rewards Indian skill and one that compresses the game until chance gains too much influence. A surface offering turn from the first day can still produce excellent cricket if bounce is consistent and batters can devise a method. A surface that breaks unpredictably turns selection, patience and conditioning into secondary factors. The irony is that extreme preparation can weaken India abroad by narrowing opportunities for batters and fast bowlers at home. We celebrate victory, but the development system needs contests in which players solve varied problems over time.
The World Test Championship has given bilateral series a table, though its uneven schedules and percentage system remain imperfect. The ICC’s official championship hub at least makes explicit that individual Tests feed a longer competition. India should use that structure more ambitiously. Publish pitch and venue goals before a home season: some surfaces seam, some turn, some demand endurance. Protect five-Test marquee series where viable. Give emerging players A-team red-ball tours that resemble the conditions they will encounter. Most of all, stop speaking as if every match must finish quickly to be entertaining. A draw earned through resistance can be gripping. The format’s enemy is not duration; it is meaninglessness.
The IPL is not the villain, but incentives are real
Blaming the IPL for everything is lazy. The league has improved player earnings, fielding standards, tactical literacy and the market for Indian cricket. It subsidises much of the ecosystem I want preserved. But money changes choices. A young fast bowler sees the physical toll of long spells, the uncertainty of red-ball selection and the life-changing value of a short-format contract. Moral lectures about the cap will not outweigh those facts. Central contracts and match fees must make sustained Test availability economically rational. Domestic red-ball performers need secure retainers, high-quality medical support and visible selection pathways. If Ranji excellence appears less useful than a few televised overs, players are not philistines for responding.
Workload management also needs honesty. Rest has become both essential science and convenient fog. Players cannot contest every international match plus a franchise season, but supporters deserve to know which formats and series carry priority. The board should publish principles without disclosing private medical details: minimum recovery windows, limits for fast bowlers and a hierarchy for marquee series. What irritates fans is not rotation itself; it is the impression that bilateral cricket is endlessly expendable while commercially central tournaments are immovable. Test status cannot rest only on player quotations about childhood dreams. The schedule must reveal the same priority.
Domestic cricket is the load-bearing wall
The Ranji Trophy survives partly because generations insist it matters, yet its public presentation often feels like an obligation discharged in small type. Scorecards can be found, streams are improving and serious followers do the work, but the competition needs coherent windows and storytelling. Do not scatter rounds around white-ball commitments until continuity disappears. Create a predictable season, protect adequate preparation and market regional rivalries without turning them into costume drama. Grounds should admit local fans cheaply, with basic facilities and live information. A child in Indore or Coimbatore should be able to discover that elite cricket is happening nearby without belonging to three WhatsApp groups.
I would also connect domestic success more explicitly to India A selection. Publish broad criteria, acknowledge role-specific needs and reward repeated performance across conditions. Selection can never be a spreadsheet; balance and projection matter. Yet opacity invites the belief that franchise visibility beats first-class craft. The board need not debate every omission on television, but periodic explanations would respect the competition. A batter who spends four years learning to leave the new ball should not feel invisible beside someone whose highlights fit in thirty seconds.
Use wealth to buy time
Cricket’s richest institution can afford decisions whose return is not immediate. Subsidise tickets. Fund day-night experimentation carefully rather than as a gimmick. Coordinate with railways and local transport for major Tests. Improve drainage so weather steals fewer hours. Pay visiting boards enough to sustain longer series. Underwrite red-ball academies and sports science. Schedule matches in cities with genuine demand while rotating opportunities transparently. These are investments in time—the time spectators give, the time players spend mastering technique and the time a contest needs to breathe.
I reject both fatalism and sentimentality. Test cricket will not vanish tomorrow in India; its cultural reservoir is too deep. That is not permission to neglect it. Traditions erode gradually, through one inconvenient fixture, one foregone domestic season and one generation that knows the whites mainly from tribute videos. The BCCI would rather we admire its balance sheet than ask what the money protects. I am asking. The board has built a formidable commercial machine. Its next achievement should be making a five-day match feel not like a museum piece sustained by people my age, but like a living appointment a new supporter can enter, afford and understand.
