The Test: An afterthought

The third season of “The Test” started streaming on Prime and instantly I got into the job to finish it. It started in the English summer of 2023, with how the Australian cricket team won the World Test Championship Final (WTC) defeating India at “The Oval”. Shortly after 19 minutes, We see the conclusion of this story arc of WTC. I was stunned by the decision of producers to wrap up the events from “The most important test match of last 2 years” in just 19 minutes. This is egregious! But how did this series get to such a low level after two (actually one) very promising seasons and just broke the promise to the entire cricket-loving population?

Let’s start from the beginning:

“The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team” is a docuseries which follows the Australian cricket team and is at the doorstep of a transfer of leadership from Steve Smith to Tim Paine after the infamous “Sandpaper Scandal 2018” (which I watched live). It had footage from the dressing rooms to team meetings. All things which are necessary for the functioning of a cricket team. I didn’t know I was craving that type of cricket content. All those behind-the-scenes events, the joy of winning and the frustration of a wicket. This perfectly depicted how the team was performing as one unit with the raw emotions of players.

That season had a very accurate depiction of the Australia tour of India 2018. How determined India was, in it’s quest to win the first ever test series against the Aussies in Australia. Such flow of events connected accurately to the viewers and made the series “The best cricket docu-series” in my opinion. Finally, we had something of a competition to “The Last Dance”. To sum up first season gave a very satisfying cinematic experience in unknown territory, it worked in a kind of blue ocean strategy.

When the second season was announced, I was super excited for the behind-the-scenes action from the legendary Aus vs Ind contest in 20-21. All the drama from the lowest score to the resilience of Sydney and the breach of Gabba by the Indian team. It would’ve been a befitting second season. But alas they didn’t cover that series due to COVID protocols and released the season with just 4 episodes in it. It missed all the action to it. But we could understand the reason “COVID”.

For the third season, I was only hopeful that it would be good. I knew how intense I was for those 5 days. I watched the entire match live. So when such a roller coaster ride was completed in just 19 minutes, that seemed a little disrespectful to me. The series portrays the emotions from the English ashes in a good way but it is in no way near to the madness and rawness from the first season. I remember one particular scene from the first season, from the Headingley 2019 test, when frustrated Justin Langer (Coach) kicked a dustbin in the Australian dressing room as Nathon Lyon missed that simple chance of runout. That moment cost them the match. Such raw emotions seemed missing in the last two seasons. Also, the third season had an instance when Johnny Bairstow got out in a rather peculiar way, here the response to this controversial dismissal seemed rather a cover-up than a genuine motive of players and the team.

To conclude this series went from “an honest cricket series” just showing the events to “a PR event for Cricket Australia” which now selects some series based upon their convenience. This in my opinion is the biggest betrayal which deprived cricket fans of a feast to their eyes!

PS: A humble request to BCCI, kindly do not attempt this on your own. You might just end up being Chahat Fateh Ali Khan (A badly done attempt).