On the first morning of the second South Africa – England Test, all the talk was about the record numbers at the MCG and what it might mean for cricket.
Big Bash crowd has Cape Town talking
News of the staggering 80,883 crowd for Saturday’s Melbourne derby in the KFC Big Bash League reverberated around Newlands before the start of play in this second Test between South Africa and England.
Yet if that record BBL crowd at the MCG was another sign of the growing influence of Twenty20 cricket, a sold out Cape Town Test was at least a reminder that the longest form of the game is not dead just yet.
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The official attendance figure for the first day of this match was 20,195. More than half of those are estimated to have travelled from England, escaping the depressing UK winter and taking the chance to soak up the sun and cheap beer at one of the world’s most stunning grounds.
It would be a mistake, though, to think the scene at Newlands is representative of the health of Test cricket as a whole or indeed of its vibrancy in South Africa.
Newlands may be sold out for the first four days of this match but that certainly wasn’t the case for the first Test in Durban, when a combination of a poor South Africa performance and local indifference saw the crowds dwindle down to an almost exclusively English audience by day four.
The New Year’s Test in Cape Town is one of the bucket-list matches to tick off and given England had not toured here for six years the vast numbers of visitors from the UK over the Christmas period should be no surprise.
Yet when the series moves on to Johannesburg and Pretoria in the next few weeks, expect to see vast empty spaces at the Wanderers and Centurion.
That’s despite the fact the typical ticket price for a day at a Test in South Africa is around A$15.
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As an outsider, cricket in general seems troubled in South Africa. The Test side remains ranked No.1 in the world but concerns exist about the quality of the first-class system and the talent coming through.
If South Africa A, who lost to England by an innings in a recent tour match, really are the next best group of players available to coach Russell Domingo then the problem is probably far greater than most feared.
It’s not just South Africa, though. One only need look at the current fortunes of West Indies cricket, where a once-great team is now struggling to remain competitive.
An Englishman would be rather forgetful to cite the one-sided results in Australia’s current series against West Indies as a sign of that decline. Alastair Cook's side was trounced 5-0 in the Ashes just two summers ago.
Yet the falling attraction of Caribbean cricket and the lack of genuine superstars in the Test arena – with the likes of Gayle, Bravo, Russell and Sammy in the BBL – is perhaps the key reason why for the first time the Big Bash appears, from a distance anyway, to be capturing the public imagination more than the Tests.
Outside of England and Australia, Test cricket is struggling. Even in England, where the primacy of Test cricket is sacrosanct, the sport plays second fiddle to the all-encompassing Premier League football and is vying for that status with rugby union and tennis.
At Lord’s, where even the cheapest tickets can set you back upwards of A$100, Tests aren’t always sold out. Outside of London, particularly at Headingley in Leeds, the early Tests of the summer, typically against the likes of New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, struggle to sell.
So, while all felt well with the world on day one in Cape Town, the attendance in Melbourne was a warning that Test cricket can no longer assume it is the No.1 format.
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