What we are watching at Melbourne is not an anomaly. It is a continuation. The reckless shot-making, the ungainly hooks, the almost casual abandonment of technique in the current Ashes Test are not merely a product of England smelling victory on Day 2 of a Test match. They are the logical outcome of a deeper malaise – one that has crept across continents, formats, and philosophies. It is ironical that over 100,000 fans have turned up at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to witness what is a travesty of the institution called Test cricket.
We have seen this charade before. Not long ago, India rolled out a visibly under-prepared wicket in Kolkata, a surface designed less to host a contest and more to engineer a result. The ball spat, bounced unevenly, and exaggerated extremes. Batters were left guessing, bowlers over-empowered, and the match narrative compressed into frenetic bursts of chaos. We saw a similar tale unfold in late 2024 as the pitches at Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai created chaos. That the home team knotted themselves into a jumble on team selection further accentuated the crisis.
The Melbourne Test feels like an extension of that same thinking – a pitch curated not to age gracefully, but to force outcomes quickly. When surfaces are tilted too heavily towards one side early, they don’t just distort balance – they warp behaviour. Batters stop trusting technique because technique no longer guarantees survival. Judgment gives way to calculation. If the ball is unpredictable anyway, why not swing? If the chase is short, why not gamble? And we are now sitting and debating if India should have adopted the same approach to scale 125 in the second innings at Eden. Yes they should have; we would have won the trees but missed the woods!
England’s approach at the Melbourne Cricket Ground is being framed as audacious and modern. In truth, it is deeply reactive. This is not Bazball as philosophy; it is Bazball as a coping mechanism. And that distinction matters. Test cricket was never about the certainty of outcomes. It was about navigating uncertainty over time. Under-prepared pitches collapse that time frame. They compress Tests into spurts of high drama followed by long stretches of irrelevance. Once the math becomes manageable – 20 runs, 50 runs, even 150 – technique becomes negotiable. The format quietly morphs into a white-ball chase wearing red-ball clothing.
The fourth Test showed us where this road leads. England needing 175, batting with T20 intent, surviving not because of method but because the numbers said they could afford casualties. They got across the line. The scoreboard approved. But something fundamental was lost in translation. Now imagine this logic institutionalised. Imagine curators preparing wickets with the explicit brief of “getting a result” inside four days. Imagine captains knowing that resistance is futile, because surfaces will not reward patience anyway. Imagine batters growing up believing that a Test chase is merely a longer powerplay. At that point, what exactly differentiates Test cricket beyond duration?
The danger is not entertainment – Test cricket has always produced drama when allowed to breathe. The danger is homogenisation. When every format borrows the worst instincts of the shortest one, the ecosystem collapses inward.
Yes, over 100,000 people have turned up at the MCG. Yes, many of them are enjoying the spectacle. But spectatorship should not be confused with validation. Crowds also flock to exhibition fights and novelty acts. That has never been the benchmark for cricket’s highest form.
From Kolkata to Melbourne, the message seems consistent: control the pitch, control the result. But control, in excess, kills nuance. And nuance is the lifeblood of Test cricket. If winning increasingly requires abandoning technique, and pitches increasingly reward chaos over craft, then the question is no longer whether Tests are becoming shorter.
It is whether they are becoming shallower.
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