Game over for test cricket?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2021
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do audiences, sponsors and broadcasters still have the patience for five-day matches? Or is the future now with the shorter one-day and Twenty20 formats?
Rahul Tandon speaks to Geoff Allardice, general manager of cricket for the International Cricket Council, about his hopes that the inaugural World Test Championship final this year will reinvigorate traditional long-form cricket, as well as Lalit Beriwala, director of the major cricket sponsor Shyam Steel, one of the tournament's major sponsors.
But the world's biggest cricketing nation, India, has moved firmly over to the faster-moving - and more profitable - three-hour T20 matches. We hear from cricket writer Sharda Ugra, player-turned-commentator Deep Dasgupta, and sports business analyst Mudar Patherya.
(Picture: Indian batsman Virat Kohli leaves the field after being dismissed in a test match against New Zealand; Credit: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there, I'm Rahul Tandon and welcome to Business Daily here on the BBC. |
| 0:05.5 | Today we're talking about the business of cricket ahead of the World Test Championship final. |
| 0:10.9 | We're asking, will it make the longer format of the game more attractive to sponsors? |
| 0:16.4 | There is great pressure on test cricket in countries where cricket itself is sort of struggling to stay |
| 0:21.4 | sustainable and viable. I mean, in Indian women's cricket, they don't have any kind of long-form |
| 0:26.5 | cricket at all. And we hear from the man in charge of the sport. He'll tell us that test cricket |
| 0:31.9 | is here to stay and that they have big plans to take the game to new markets. The Olympic Games provides a platform where, you know, |
| 0:40.0 | we can bring something to the Olympic Games |
| 0:42.0 | that would enhance their festival of sport, |
| 0:44.8 | and I think the Olympics would benefit cricket as well. |
| 0:47.5 | That's all coming up on Business Daily here on the BBC. |
| 0:55.7 | Come on, come on! |
| 1:00.0 | Those are the sounds of Indians playing cricket on the Medan. |
| 1:04.6 | It is one of the world's most popular sports, |
| 1:07.9 | and in the last decade has become a billion dollar industry. Now many find cricket |
| 1:14.1 | quite a strange game and it's unusual in that it has three different formats. A three-hour version |
| 1:20.6 | which is now the most popular known as T20 cricket, a one-day version and also believe it all not, a five-day version which is called |
| 1:29.9 | Test cricket. |
| 1:30.9 | And for that format of the game, well, it's a pretty big week. |
| 1:38.9 | The first ever world test championship final will take place here in England on Friday, India against New Zealand. |
| 1:52.6 | And it comes at a time when interest in the longer format of the game, well, let's say it's not as popular as it used to be. |
| 2:00.4 | Let's head to the Medan's of Kolkata in India |
... |
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