Test Cricket
A Slow Game
Test matches are the reason why cricket has a reputation for being slow. Tests are five-day-long matches played for about seven hours each day, so an average test takes 35 hours to determine a winner, but not always. A test match is divided into four innings; both teams bat and bowl for two innings each. And 90 overs must be bowled in a day.
Match summary of a Test match.
A day's play gets divided into three sessions: morning, afternoon, and evening. The teams break for a half-hour lunch between the morning and afternoon sessions and a 15-minute tea break between the afternoon and evening sessions. The objective of the game remains the same in any given format, which is to score the most runs between the two sides.
Types of Cricket Pitches
Both teams usually bat twice over the span of five days, usually one after the other. A coin toss determines which team bats or bowls first. A team generally prefers to bat first after winning the toss because batting last in a test match is considered challenging for even the best batting teams because the pitch deteriorates, which is the area on which most of the action takes place, again it depends on the kind of pitch they are playing on, or the strengths of the opposition, or the weather conditions. Some pitches are batting-friendly, meaning it is easier to score runs on those pitches, whereas others are bowling-friendly, which help the bowlers get a team all out quickly. Similarly, some sides have strong batting lineups, whereas some have strong bowling attacks. As far as weather conditions are concerned, overcast or windy or the combination of the two are lethal for a batter as the conditions disproportionally favor the skills of a bowler as they get more swing, or in baseball terms, more curve on the ball, which the batter find hard to face. On the other hand, sunny conditions assist the batters as the ball behaves less mischievously.
Batting in a test match is more of a defensive and orthodox approach, where a batter tries to prevent his wicket as the bowlers come at them all guns blazing. One rash shot or a short lapse in concentration can cost the batter their wicket, simply put, there is less room for a batter to make mistakes, so their approach has to be cautious; on the other hand, a bowler has no limit on the number of overs they can bowl, each over must have six legal deliveries (pitches), it takes a bowler only one delivery to get a batter out.
The team batting first usually bats until all eleven players get out, or they can declare innings when they feel they have scored enough runs. A team that bats first prefers to bat for one and a half to two days primarily to play out the time and to tire the opposition players; time is of the essence in a test game, and whichever team wins the most sessions over the test match, more often than not, wins the game. Anything above 300-350 runs is considered a good first-innings score. Again, it depends on the pitch, weather, and opposition.
The team batting in the second innings can either match the first-inning score, go beyond it or remain under it. The team batting second scoring less than the first innings score results in the team batting first to lead the other team by the deficit runs in the third innings. For instance, if the team batting first scored 350 runs in the first innings and the other team manages to put up only 300 runs in the second inning, then the team that batted first starts the third innings with an excess of 50 runs.
Similarly, if the team batting second scores more than the first inning score, the side that batted first trails the other team by the number of runs scored over the first innings score. For example, if the team batting first scores 350 runs and the team batting second scores 400 runs, then the side that batted first starts the third innings with a deficit of 50 runs.
If the second-inning score matches the score in the first inning, the third inning begins at nil. In any case, the task of the team batting third is to put up a target to chase in the fourth innings. The team batting fourth must match the total score of the third innings to win the game. If the team batting fourth fails to score the third-inning score, it loses the game.
Follow-on Scorecard
Although in a case where the team bats poorly in the second innings and gets nowhere near the first innings total, the team that batted first has the option to enforce a follow-on, which forces the team that batted second to bat again in the third innings, remember in an ideal scenario the team that bats first bats third. But, the dynamics change a little in this case as the team that batted first bats in the fourth innings and must score the total scored in the third innings. In the case of a follow-on, if the team batting second is not able to go past the first innings score even after batting consecutively, then the team that batted first does not have to bat the second time and wins the match not only with the deficit runs but also with an inning to spare.
A match can also result in a draw if neither the batting team scores the runs required in the fourth innings nor the bowling team gets a side all out. In such a case, the match results in a draw, there is no winner, somewhat like a stalemate in chess, and the teams share the victory in goodwill.
Pretty straightforward, right? Imagine explaining it.
