Sri Lanka And West Indies Are Test Cricket Cannon Fodder For England

If ever there was a summer that underlined the difficulty of keeping cricket both engaging and competitive outside of the big three, then the 2024 Sri Lankan and West Indian tour to England has been that season. A West Indies team continually trying to bed in new and raw talent fell 3-0. Sri Lanka lost the series at Lord’s on Sunday after showing some belated grit, determination and skill as they did at Manchester.

There was one glorious Friday afternoon at Trent Bridge in July that felt like real Test cricket. Kavem Hodge and Alick Athanaze defied England and batted in attritional style to wear bowlers down before displaying true Caribbean flair. It was a throwback, a fleeting mirage as the same batting line-up was massacred in the second dig. The current aggregate score reads England 5 Sri Lanka and West Indies 0 after five games.

The Sri Lankans, like Kraigg Brathwaite’s team, had a solitary warm-up hit before they entered the unforgiving Test arena. Their dreadful starts in three of their four innings so far are a testament to a lack of drills in real world English conditions. There have been resistance fighters. The veterans Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal kept the Sri Lankan boat afloat as did the very promising Kamindu Mendis and Milan Rathnayake. However, the crowd needs a competition over the best part of a week rather than a slow, inevitable defeat.

Sri Lanka’s cojones weren’t so evident at Lord’s. Rather perversely on a belting sunshine-kissed pitch, they invited Ollie Pope’s team to have a bat. England’s tailenders scored over 150 runs while Sri Lanka’s top order collapsed to 83 for 5. it was a tepid effort which put off crowds coming back after day three. Never mind 4o wickets. England’s home games feel like a done deal after the first ten.

The Indians visit England in 2025 before Ben Stokes’s team takes on the most difficult tour of them all – the Ashes. These softball thrashings have bedded in new stars like Gus Atkinson, but are not telling anyone if the Three Lions can hang tough down under.

The World Test Championship sounds like a Premier League-style battle between rivals, but in reality only has a showpiece final that sparks any interest. England were bottom of that table coming into July. World Cups in white-ball cricket have winners, losers and semi-finalists. Test cricket has series that can’t replicate the joy of a last-minute winner. Jeopardy is limited. The idea of winning the overall prize needs some work to make it feel like a mace that has value. When England became the number one team in the world under Andrew Strauss in 2011, the captain admitted climbing the hill again was hard in “The Edge” documentary.

Test match cricket can bring stardust outside the Ashes and India. It is still popular in England, but the prospect of constant uncompetitive wins is not healthy for a sport that already has a two-tier system of nations. There were huge swathes of empty seats on Sunday at Lord’s for the denouement.

It was an eerie and rather archaic echo of sleepy 1980s Mondays when games used to meander to a draw. There is no such problem in the modern day of helter-skelter speed dial Test cricket, but the home comforts of Bazball means fans cannot trust the opposition to last beyond the weekend.

Ticket prices that started at £95 for adults in the final throes of what was essentially a dead contest did not help.

England’s sixth red-ball game at the Oval next week has sold well for the first three days. As a contest, it will need to spark curiosity in a dead rubber. The administrators are eyeing up a whole glut of white-ball cricket afterwards as Australia visit for the autumnal-like stage of the season. An eight-match fast food feast against the old enemy will bring an edge to a second gear cricket summer.

Sri Lanka and West Indies have rolled over and had their tummies tickled. Test cricket needs a better product than that to remind everyone why it is still considered the pinnacle and purest form of the game.