First, Hang the Administrators

So England will have different captains for each form of cricket this summer. Fine. Nothing much to see there. Much more important, really, is the news from South Africa: Australia’s forthcoming tour has been cut to just two tests. As usual, the over-crowded calendar is blamed. As usual this is a reasonable diagnosis. As usual it’s test match cricket that suffers.

And it suffers at the hands of people who claim to value test cricket above all other forms of the game. The sport’s administrators say they want to protect test cricket while at the same time they sacrifice it any time there’s a spot of fixture congestion or their coffers are runnig dangerously low. (Incidentally, one rather suspects less effort is put into promoting test cricket than other forms of the game. Too difficult, I suppose. Like, you know, Shakespeare.)