A Beginning, A Muddle And An End

The time in a Test

Philip Larkin once said that the typical English novel had a beginning, a muddle and an end. That’s a good description of the regulations governing play in the typical Test match. The threat that rain will prevent a decisive result in the fourth Test ought to be the moment that the regulations change because it would be so easy to give the public more.  

Joe Root put the central point well when he was asked about the end of the day’s play. Why not just carry on, he said, as long as the umpires judge the light to be clear enough for safe play, until the day’s allocation of overs has been bowled? It is hard to think of a serious objection. The spectacle of the players departing a ground bathed in early evening sunlight after a day of gentle drizzle is intensely frustrating. The rules governing the final hour of the day’s play are needlessly arcane. The regulations about the end of the day are a muddle.

Perhaps allowing the game to be extended at the end of the day would give a team a small incentive to slow the game down in the easier conditions of the afternoon in the hope of bowling more in the later gloom. Perhaps too it would be irritating to be unable to plan an evening in the safe knowledge of when play would end. But cricket is full of such uncertainties.

That’s not the only muddle. Never mind the end, what about the beginning? Why does Test cricket start so late? How often has a glorious morning passed by waiting for play to start, only for overs to be lost in the middle and the end of the day. Surely the day could start at 10am and thereby create more time, both for the overs to be bowled and for making good the time that is lost to bad weather.

Begin at 10am. End when the overs are bowled or when the light fails, whichever is the sooner. A new beginning, a flexible end and no muddle.