Their Tests, our Tests

Around the time India was routing Bangladesh in an ugly stadium in Dhaka watched by nearly no one, England was rolling up the West Indies even more comprehensively, only they were doing it before a full house in Leeds. When it wasn't raining in Headingley the sky was a vivid blue, denser than the bleached blue of summer skies in the subcontinent.

From newspaper reports the English scene looked better than it felt: temperatures hovered just above zero, fielders kept their hands in their pockets and the West Indians could have been forgiven for thinking that everything, even the weather, was against them. Just as no one should play Test cricket in the dehydrating heat and humidity of Bangladesh in May, the early, frozen part of an English 'summer', as Indian teams have found in the past, is unfit for human consumption.

But Leeds was better than Dhaka because there were people watching. Inspite of the cold there were men dressed as brides in white lace complete with veils and trains, pinkly English spectators dressed as Mexicans in ponchos and sombreros, happy knots of people perversely chugging beer in the bitter cold. They had paid the absurd ticket prices (between fifteen and forty five pounds a day) and they were willing to brave the cold to enjoy themselves because a day out at the cricket was meant to be fun.

There's a difference between Leeds and Dhaka or between cricket in England and Australia and cricket in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. (I was tempted to say West and East when I remembered that the Sri Lankans seem to have a great time watching cricket at home as do the West Indians—with the exception of the last World Cup when the ICC with its genius for doing the wrong thing managed to take the joy out of cricket in the Caribbean)

Ticket prices in England seem to bear some relationship to the spectator's ability to pay. Fifteen pounds is roughly 1200 rupees a day which seems a substantial sum of money to me, especially if you add the cost of travelling to the stadium and back and the prices that the concessions at the ground charge for food and drink. But from the evidence of the stands at Headingley, it's a price that the market will bear.

Compare this with the sub-continent.( I'll leave out Pakistan and Bangladesh: I don't know enough about those two countries, though from the evidence of television, Test match attendances are dire. I remember reading that during the last two Indian tours of Pakistan the stands were empty because tickets were too expensive, security too tight and ticket-booths too hard to get to.) Let's look at ticket prices and their effects on attendance not at the worst of our venues, like that drain, Feroz Shah Kotla, but at the best, say Mohali.

This is an extract from the report in the Tribune of 13 March last year, about the Mohali Test against the English tourists:

"Mohali, March 12 After the decision of the Punjab Cricket Association to reduce the prices of the General Block and VIP Block tickets, today witnessed a heavy rush at the stands of the stadium on the fourth day of ongoing India-England Test match on at PCA Stadium, here. The decision on reduction combined with the weekend rush had the stands pretty full today."

From Rs 200 per day for the general seats and Rs 1500 for the VIP seats, the prices had been reduced to Rs 50 and Rs 300. In its report the Tribune had a Class X student, a mechanic and a clerk saying that the Punjab Cricket Association's decision to cut prices had drawn them to the stadium.

'"I am a middle-class man and I cannot afford to spend Rs 200 per head for my family of five. So I went on making excuses to my children when they insisted on watching Rahul Dravid playing here. But when I came to know that the general block prices have come down, I decided to take my family to the stadium to watch the action live," said Ram Khilawan, a Junior Division Clerk with Department of Punjab.'

The PCA made tickets affordable and Mohali had a full house, the teams in the middle had the benefit of the ambience spectators alone can create and seats that would have gone to waste made some money for the association. Everyone benefited: so why aren't affordable tickets the rule in cricket venues in India? Why do associations price tickets so ineptly? A Test match seat is a perishable thing: why wouldn't you get a low price for it instead of nothing at all? Airlines do it; theatres in sensible countries have cheap standby seats you can buy at the last minute, why don't Indian cricket venues? The answer, I think, is that having grown fat on television revenues generated by ODIs, provincial cricket administrators are more concerned with handing out passes to people that matter than getting cricket fans to the stadium. Revenues from ticket sales seem like small change to these 'honorary' administrators, careless of house-keeping or accounting, who are more concerned with winning votes in tiny electoral colleges than attending to either the bottom line or the comfort of spectators.

It's killing Test cricket off. The pass-bearing 'patron' will turn up for an ODI, but he isn't a fan, he's a parasite and parasites don't watch Tests, fans do. To get the fan to the stadium you need sensibly priced tickets, public transport to the stadium, parking space, covered stands so you don't die of heat stroke, food you can safely eat and loos that aren't pits slopping with…well, let's not go there. This isn't a utopian programme: it's been done successfully. Mohali's amenities are wonderful: they just need to get their prices right and Chepauk in Chennai consistently attracts large crowds for Test matches because it does the basic things well.

I'm not asking for beer to be sold at the Eden Gardens and I don't expect to see jolly Indian men dressed as dulhans any time soon at an Indian Test match. I'll settle for happy young faces sucking Sprite up with a straw wearing paper caps and cheering. That way when I reach for the remote on my sofa (having paid my stadium dues in youth!) I'll have the satisfaction of watching Test cricket played in populated stadiums for live bodies, not just the television camera. And, rather more importantly, the thrill of Test cricket close-up will keep India's passion for the long game alive.