It has been a fantastic day for England's cricketers, who are looking in really sharp form ahead of the Ashes series.
But, as Jonathan Agnew pointed out on TMS today, there are plenty of empty seats around the ground. I made the same point about the first test last week. There is very little reason for that to be the case. The football season hasn't yet started. The national team is in great form. The opponents are a top flight team who beat Australia a few months ago. Even the English summer weather is, by and large, playing ball.
Sadly, cricketing authorities seem to have been overcome by a bout of rapaciousness following two home Ashes victories. Test match tickets have shot up in price. Tickets for Lords are as high as £90 and they go up to £60 for this series. That means a father to take his kids along to the Test will cost hundreds.
Test match authorities are turning what used to be an affordable day out into something that is out of the reach of many people in economically straitened times. The more prices go up, the more test matches will be attended by the corporate crowd and not the great social mix that makes test match cricket so special.
The authorities should look beyond the short term bottom line and think about what is going to attract a new generation of fans to the game and to the unique pleasure of a day at a test match. Cricket has chosen to hit the jackpot in the past few years by selling TV rights to Sky and minimising its audience at TV level. The very least they could do with this TV rights jackpot would be to make test match cricket affordable for all.
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