No place for the faint of heart, Headingley, and certainly not for some sketchy Sri Lankan batsmen at the back end of a cold damp week in May with the two best seam bowlers in the world swinging away. Nobody liked it much on either side, which makes Jonny Bairstow’s big 140 all the more spectacular.
Test matches in May are silly. This isn’t the hottest place in the world at any time. I mean, did you catch the opening of our very own IPL, or the Natwest T20 Blast as you might know it? While I watched Essex take on Surrey in the warmth of my sitting room, Sky’s Nasser Hussain and Rob Key were pitchside, fully togged up for Everest base camp. You practically got frostbite watching them.
More than six Tests in an English summer is a bit much too. The game is developing at Mach 1 and the traditional forms will have to keep pace. So how about this: most summers England should play two three-match Test series, broken up with five-match series against Australia, India and South Africa. And let’s use May for a few appetisers of T20s or one-day internationals. And why not make all Tests four-day affairs, possibly with 100 overs a day? Not many go the full five any more. What about dropping the toss and letting the visiting team choose what they want to do, in all forms of the game? That would be the end of the doctored pitch.
Organise county championships around three six-team -geographical conferences, each playing home and away. Three winners and best runner up go into a four-team knockout. The same format could be applied to the 50-over game, with matches played after the four-day game.
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