scaly_piscine
Goalkeeper
So why is domestic cricket typically four days? This goes for much of the world. NZ and Australia stuff is happening now, this is also 4 days.
Australia's domestic cricket looks absolute garbage for four day stuff. Mostly drawn matches, frequent declarations, often after ~120 overs in the first innings and scoring not more much more than 400, too much revolving around bonus points and draws. In NZ barring an abandonment and a heavily shortened forfeited innings match, those games have completed but the scores are typically much lower and it's much more bowling friendly.
Those two nations are exhibiting both ends of the spectrum - if the pitch is flat you typically don't get a result and you get all sorts of contrivances to try and force one. So instead teams will often contrive results wickets that mean dobber bowling and high risk batting prevail more than they should.
Such cricket is focused around developing fundamental skills (as opposed to being a big commercial attraction like 20 over stuff), ideally where the best players can go on to play Test cricket. Test cricket is 5 days. This length of time allows games played on a much wider range of pitches to reach their more natural conclusion without the contrivance. Besides scheduling and making Test cricket more 'special' at the expense of domestic cricket I can't see any good reasons to shorten domestic cricket to 4 days. It seems to me something that's a hangover from the past that exists because of the status quo. It produces lower quality cricket with more contrivance.
We are seeing knock-out matches typically being 5 days, ironically this usually involves some rule about the team with a first innings lead which often makes the match a bit of a farce in a different way.
Most people on here would be against reductions in Test cricket, or even reducing domestic cricket formats by ~20% (40 overs or The Hundred) and would see it as silly. I can't think of any other professional sport that would do this. They don't play shortened games in professional football, rugby etc. they don't make it the 80m and 320m in athletics or give you a smaller javelin to chuck. So why is First Class cricket still four days?
Australia's domestic cricket looks absolute garbage for four day stuff. Mostly drawn matches, frequent declarations, often after ~120 overs in the first innings and scoring not more much more than 400, too much revolving around bonus points and draws. In NZ barring an abandonment and a heavily shortened forfeited innings match, those games have completed but the scores are typically much lower and it's much more bowling friendly.
Those two nations are exhibiting both ends of the spectrum - if the pitch is flat you typically don't get a result and you get all sorts of contrivances to try and force one. So instead teams will often contrive results wickets that mean dobber bowling and high risk batting prevail more than they should.
Such cricket is focused around developing fundamental skills (as opposed to being a big commercial attraction like 20 over stuff), ideally where the best players can go on to play Test cricket. Test cricket is 5 days. This length of time allows games played on a much wider range of pitches to reach their more natural conclusion without the contrivance. Besides scheduling and making Test cricket more 'special' at the expense of domestic cricket I can't see any good reasons to shorten domestic cricket to 4 days. It seems to me something that's a hangover from the past that exists because of the status quo. It produces lower quality cricket with more contrivance.
We are seeing knock-out matches typically being 5 days, ironically this usually involves some rule about the team with a first innings lead which often makes the match a bit of a farce in a different way.
Most people on here would be against reductions in Test cricket, or even reducing domestic cricket formats by ~20% (40 overs or The Hundred) and would see it as silly. I can't think of any other professional sport that would do this. They don't play shortened games in professional football, rugby etc. they don't make it the 80m and 320m in athletics or give you a smaller javelin to chuck. So why is First Class cricket still four days?
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