The ECB is relaxed about the suggestion that Test matches should be played over four days rather than five. Indeed it is quite interested in the idea. It would relieve congestion and make fewer demands on players. The counter-suggestion that a better way of doing this would be to play fewer ODIs and fewer international T20 matches is unlikely to appeal to the ECB – any more than the sensible suggestion to scrap its proposed “Hundred” tournament will be met with anything but silence.
One should admit that some of those who decry the 4-Day Tests proposal speak as if Test matches had always been played over five days. This isn’t so. For the first half-century of Test cricket matches in England were played over three days. In Australia on the other hand they were “timeless”, and played to a finish, draws being impossible. The fifth Test, as Melbourne in the 1928-9 Ashes series, went on into the eighth day. In England timeless Tests have been played when the sides were all square coming into the Fifth Test, the last such occasion being in 1972.
