Is the decline in the frequency of draws in test match cricket detrimental to the long form of the game?

Economic Papers (Economic Society of Australia), Dec, 2008 by Liam J.A. Lenten

1 Introduction and Previous Literature

During the 'glory days' of cricket in the 1980s, while there was still much fan interest in Test Cricket, One-Day Internationals (ODIs) seemed a far more glamorous television spectacle. Maybe it was the then revolutionary Tri-Nations tournament format (which lasted right up until the summer of 2008 before its eventual demise) that also allowed Australian viewers to watch neutral games (not involving Australia), that was responsible for this appeal. Alternatively, perhaps it was the day/night match format, or the coloured uniforms along with white match balls, or even the distinctive rules, such as the thirty-metre circle and fifteen-over field-setting rules. One further alternative has to be considered for why ODIs became more popular than Test Matches--that with increasing opportunity cost of time, it was a shorter form of the game. (1)

In any case, there is substantial evidence to suggest that Kerry Packer had developed a successful business model for international cricket in Australia, which later flowed on to domestic-level and other countries. However, there is no doubt that at the time that the game's purists were dismayed at the proliferation of ODIs at the relative expense of Tests--a trend that they had foreseen as early as the 'World Series' War of the mid-to-late-1970s. The limited-overs format produced higher attendances and ratings, and thus (ultimately) higher players' salaries, allowing the eventual transformation of cricket from a semi-professional sport to a fully-professional one. This trend has continued since, as can be seen in Figure 1. More recently, the rise in popularity of the shorter 'Twenty20' form of the game will be a further challenge to traditional forms of the game.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

One of the features of Test Matches is the possibility of a draw, whereby the match is not completed at the conclusion of the five days of scheduled play. In ODIs and Twenty20 matches, there is also the possibility of a 'no result' in rain-affected matches. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the decline of the frequency of draws in Test Match cricket over the last fifteen years, and explore some possible reasons for it. This is an interesting problem because of the link through to the demand for sport via the 'uncertainty of outcome' hypothesis, and for other reasons. First, given the extraordinary recent and projected future prospects of India, a country in which cricket is the major sport, the game is experiencing a surge in revenues relative to other sports. Second, cricket is a sport with more idiosyncratic rules and power structures than any other fully-professional sport. Finally, the current and past volume of academic work on international cricket is meagre within the sports economics field, a deficiency that this paper hopes to remedy.

A general commentary on economic influences on cricket can be found in Preston (2006). Bhattacharya and Smyth (2003) have evaluated the demand for cricket matches in Australia, finding that 'match-specific' factors (such as uncertainty of outcome) are more important than general economic factors. Much of the remaining work on cricket centres on team ratings and prediction, such as Allsop and Clarke (2004), as well as Brooks, Faff and Sokulsky (2002), whose 'ordered response model' predicted over 70% of all within-sample Test Match results from 1994-1999. Other cricket contributions have tended to be quite specific. One example is Ringrose's (2006) investigation into the effectiveness of the move towards neutral umpires in recent years in analysing leg-before-wicket (LBW) decisions. Another example is provided by Blackman and Chapman (2004), who estimated the additional revenue to the game from the 'superstar' effects arising from the presence of Donald Bradman in the Australian line-up.

The structure of the remainder of this paper is as follows. Section 2 relates the changes in cricket to changes in trends in the now highly-competitive sports industry, and how cricket's decision-makers have responded. Section 3 applies these ideas to the specific case of draws in Test Cricket, linking this back to the demand for sport via the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis and major factors bearing on the decline in the frequency of draws since the early 1990s. Section 4 examines changes in the trends of the mechanics of the game (both at Test and ODI-level), to explain these broad trends, as well as some thoughts on possible policy changes. Section 5 concludes.

2 Background on Competition between Sports

However, one has to analyse the reasons for Twenty20's popularity to understand why there has been an explosive growth in the number of international matches being scheduled. Sports administrators used to view their own sport as having a substantial amount of monopoly power, reflecting their belief that their sport was highly differentiated. However, as elite sport has become increasingly thought of as an 'entertainment product', these administrators have realised that they are, in essence, competing with other sports. Hence, they have sought to recruit new and retain existing paying customers, whether at-the-gate or through other forms, such as television ratings and even merchandise sales. (2) While this is understandable, changes in cricket have seldom been made with purists in mind, since they are already a captive market, and it is therefore harder to extract extra revenues from them. Rather, changes have been made to attract new people to the game from non-traditional cricket loving groups--these are mainly the groups to which Twenty20 is targeted. It is time to consider possibilities for making Test Cricket more attractive and competitive, so that this 130-year old institution can continue to survive. This shift need not necessarily occur at the expense of ODIs.