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Boxing Day Test crowds have historically dropped significantly on days two, three and four, as demonstrated by last summer’s game between Australia and Pakistan, when 62,167 turned up on day one and then about 100,000 for the remainder.
Only four times – against West Indies in 1975, India in 2011 and 2014 and New Zealand in 2019 – have more than 50,000 spectators turned up for day two of a non-Ashes match. And there has never been a 50,000-plus attendance for a non-Ashes Test on days three or four.
In that sense, Melbourne affords the same opportunity as that of Perth Stadium - a chance to grow the Test match, albeit from a much higher base than that in the west.
Shamar Joseph says he will always be available to play Test cricket for the Windies.Credit: Getty
“Playing in Perth first works really well, the time of year, people are still at work, so with the time difference more people can watch,” Hockley said. “Increasingly it is a place where we want to make sure Test cricket is really well-supported in Perth.”
Little progress was made in terms of preserving the wider future of Test and international cricket at the recent round of International Cricket Council meetings in Dubai, meanwhile, but Hockley insisted there was now a common purpose to do so.
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“We just need to keep supporting each other, all the different countries,” he said. “That has been a topic of conversation at the last meeting, it’ll be another topic of conversation when we have our annual conference in July around the ICC table.
“There’s never been more interest and investment in cricket and it is incumbent on us to work together to make sure the pinnacle format of the game is going to go from strength to strength in all countries.”
The expansion of the Australia-India series from four to five matches for the first time since 1991-92 underlines the gulf between Test cricket’s “big three” nations and the rest, which struggle to find the cash to stage such series.
But Hockley argued that a successful blue riband series next summer would help build a wider groundswell for the long form of the game. “These marquee series, the bigger they are, the more interest there is in the format,” he said. “I’m a believer that a rising tide floats all boats.”
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