Will crowd turn up for India v West Indies second Test in Delhi?

Five-day format and non-marquee matches fighting for relevance in modern cricket

The first Test between India and West Indies was played at a largely empty Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. AFP

The murmurs are growing louder in Indian cricket circles and look unlikely to die down any time soon.

Those watching from the outside would assume it has something to do with the ongoing assignment of the national team under a new leadership. But they would be wrong.

While the Indian Test team, under the captaincy of the recently appointed Shubman Gill, is preparing for the second Test against the West Indies in Delhi, which begins on Friday, the entire mental bandwidth of the public is being consumed by discussions about the future of two all-time greats and a contest that takes place later this month.

The highly successful Rohit Sharma was unceremoniously removed as India’s ODI captain, with Gill brought in for the tour of Australia that includes three ODIs and five T20s.

By all accounts, preparations are under way to replace Rohit and fellow white-ball great Virat Kohli in time for the 2027 ODI World Cup in South Africa.

Indian cricket fans are divided over how the transition phase has been handled this year, with many deeming it unnecessarily harsh and abrupt.

And just like that, the focus has shifted completely from the task at hand – a Test against West Indies, a chance for a home series sweep and crucial WTC points.

The Caribbean side were never expected to beat the Indian team, even though the latter have lost a lot of their aura at home following the shocking Test whitewash by New Zealand last year.

That setback against the Kiwis set off a chain of events that has consumed the international careers and aspirations of many senior players in the team. The spotlight continues to shine on that episode, resulting in a discernible lack of focus on the current assignment.

The first Test between India and West Indies was played at the gigantic Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. That venue struggles to fill the stands even if 50,000 turn up. As was expected, the venue looked completely barren for the two and a half days that the match lasted as India completed an innings win.

For context, last week a one-day contest between India A and Australia A in the northern Indian city of Kanpur attracted a crowd of 25,000.

Many years back, when Kohli was the all-powerful leader of Indian cricket, he had proposed an Australia-style system where five or six traditional venues in India be made permanent hosts for Test matches and all limited overs games shared among other centres.

That idea made perfect sense because certain venues in the country showed a visibly greater affinity to the game long before the IPL was a thing.

Having fans turn up at the ground regardless of the opposition or format is a privilege only the England team enjoys. And Australia to an extent. Everyone else needs to put in a real effort to make sure matches are not played with empty seats in the background.

The second Test will be played in Delhi, which has traditionally seen decent crowds for all international matches. Plus, it is the festive season. Hopefully, the crowd situation will not be as dire as it was in Ahmedabad.

But there is a larger issue here. Test cricket in general is fighting for clear structure and support from the system. Outside the ‘big’ teams of England, Australia, India and possibly South Africa, Tests are not finding many takers among stakeholders because it is too expensive to run a red-ball structure.

Many questions posed to the West Indies contingent during the India tour centred around finances and the state of affairs in the Caribbean. That’s never a good sign.

There are also talks about a possible tier system that would allow the ‘top’ teams to capitalise on lucrative bilateral series and do away with mismatched contests against sides who seem unable to take the match into the fifth day.

If West Indies manage to genuinely challenge India in the second Test, and the crowds turn up in good numbers, those uncomfortable discussions about the five-day format can be postponed to another day. If not, then the winds of change will eventually blow through.