Throughout more than a century of evolution, one enduring tradition of Test cricket has survived unchanged and unchallenged
Making a meal out of Test cricket
Test cricket has evolved from a game for gentlemen clad in flannels and hooved in hob-nailed boots to a domain for professional athletes now paid more for 20 overs’ work than many can scrounge together through a lifetime.
From timeless Tests through the abolition of rest days and the need for out-of-cricket employment, the game’s elite form is now entering an era whereby matches are played under floodlights using a ball of unprecedented pedigree and hue.
With talk that other conventions, including the fifth day and the coin toss, might also be soon for the chop.
But throughout more than a century of evolution, one enduring tradition of Test cricket has survived unchanged and unchallenged as a timeless reminder of the game's quaint Victorian heritage.
One anachronistic dinosaur that continues to roam unaffected through a landscape that has become unrecognisable in recent years to all (except perhaps Chris Gayle) – the institutionalised 40-minute midday down-tools-for-lunch and the half-as-long interval later in the day for afternoon tea.
The incongruity of having a pre-ordained meal time welded into the playing schedule was highlighted in its hilarity during the rain-soaked second day of the current third Test at the SCG.
When the half hour that yielded the day’s finest, clearest weather was enjoyed by a few hundred lucky children granted unrestrained access to the playing surface for their Milo in2 Cricket frolics.
While the two international teams of full-time cricketers, who had spent all but 11 minutes of the preceding two hours sat in the sanctuary of their fully catered dressing rooms watching the drizzle fall, were left instead to watch the youngsters having a hit and a catch because lunch had to be taken.
Under Test cricket’s antiquely crafted laws that are slowly being translated into 21st Century speak, a day’s play must include a 40-minute luncheon opportunity and then another 20-minute interval to ensure the seven-hour playing day is neatly broken up into three sessions each of two hours’ duration.
With but a few minor tweaks allowed for unplanned occurrences – such as innings being completed in the minutes before lunch is scheduled at which point the players’ queue for the bain-marie can form a few minutes early – lunch is cricket’s immovable feast.
Such is the scope of the catering requirements at corporate function rooms and myriad associated events during the mandated gaps in the day that lunch has to be called a couple of hours after a day’s play begins – even if no playing has been done during that period.
Which, in itself, begs the question of why professional athletes of the 21st Century need to sit down for a plate of roasted sea bream or butternut squash with blackbean chiili (typical Lord’s fare) or a buffet including herb-crusted barramundi and beef fillet (at the players other preferred chow shop, the MCG)?
Tennis players who slug through a five-set Grand Slam battle lasting beyond four hours, often under blazing heat on synthetic surfaces that radiate heat like a barbecue hotplate, are not granted time for a hearty ragout and a short rest regardless of how their match might be poised.
Those lycra-clad road warriors climbing, unrelenting for the best part of summer’s day through the Pyrenees as they Tour de France are not known to dismount for a degustation, or indeed (as infamy suggests) a comfort stop.
And even though they are only expected to break into a jog when the lightning horn sounds, pro golfers can stay out there from dawn til mid-afternoon without needing to retire to the clubhouse for a club sandwich.
Or demanding any tea time other than the one that tells them when to clock-on for the day.
Former Australia Test batsman Simon Katich, who has recently forged a career in the upper administrative levels of Australian Football League club Greater Western Sydney, agrees it might be time to revisit the placement and duration of meal intervals, in line with other fading Test cricket traditions.
Perhaps a single break of 45 minutes that separates two elongated sessions of three hours, each of which contains 50 overs (with the length of the break curtailed if that output can’t be reached, which might in turn see the game progress at a greater clip).
With maybe the provision for an extended (five minutes) drinks break in the final session, when combatants are often at their most fatigued.
"The way the game is now, there is always a 12th man running out drinks at the fall of a wicket or the changing of gloves," said Katich, who played 56 Tests between 2001 and 2010 and believes the game could do worse than consider revisiting the last remaining institutionalised meal break that resides within a day’s professional sport.
"The way it is for the players now, they are all good athletes and fitter than ever, and if both teams have to do play by the same changed conditions then it’s not delivering an advantage to anyone.
"I don’t think batsmen would have an issue with three hours because it’s an advantage if you get in, to be able to have a longer session.
"Bowlers and fielders maybe not so much, but it’s fair to both teams because you both have to do it and you then have to adapt.
"It’s never been done before, so it’s like anything – once it’s been trialled it could easily become the norm.
"Like scoring 400 runs in a one-day international (which had not been achieved until Australia did it at Johannesburg in 2006 but has been passed a further 16 times since), and it’s only a matter of time before that gets pushed out to 500.
"And it’s like day-night Tests.
"It’s only once you’ve tried it that you can make a proper assessment of whether it works or not."
Katich claimed there would be certain prevailing conditions – days of extreme heat in Australia or enervating humidity on the sub-continent – when the flexibility for extra breaks or intervals of longer duration could be implemented with agreement between the competing teams.
And if convention continues to overrule evolution, then Katich has called at least for the two breaks dotted throughout the day to be of equivalent length – 30 minutes apiece – to give players the chance to maximise each chance to refresh as well as replenish.
He believes the current 20-minutes allotted for tea might be an appropriate window in which to wrangle a plate of scones and a mug of Earl Grey, but it’s not sufficient to squeeze in the ice bath or the rub-down that overworked fast bowlers or concentration-sapped batters most crave.
And given that time added on to existing Test playing sessions bedevilled by poor weather or even worse over rates can now extend to two and a half hours, stretching the requirement to an extra 30 minutes without a prawn platter or a protein bar is scarcely as revolutionary as paying players a viable wage.
Or covering pitches in the event of wet weather.
If today’s fully professional cricketers can cope with forever flitting between red and white ball formats, day and floodlights scheduling, meals prepared in the stadium kitchens at Birmingham and Bangalore, they can doubtless adapt to the lopping an afternoon smoke-o from their daily Test schedule.
Which might mean that on days like yesterday, when gaps in the precipitation were as hard to find as advocates for eight-ball overs or towelling hats instead of protective helmets, the rare dry spells that come along see excited youngsters in the crowd watching the stars of the game putting on a show in the middle.
Not the other way around.