Give it up for 2024: Test cricket has had few better years

Let's admit it, cricket fans. We have a moaning problem. In the year 2024, we have had at least two former Test captains, influential voices both, call for two tiers in Test cricket. Ravi Shastri did it at an event organised by MCC, the body that governs the laws of cricket. Michael Vaughan voiced his opinion in the aftermath of a one-sided win for England against Sri Lanka at Lord's only for England to be defeated the following week at The Oval. The underlying assumption is that only a couple of teams are worthy of playing the best three or four teams in the world.

And I see y'all. Vaughan and Shastri are far from being the only ones to run down Test cricket. Thousands of you have agreed. I see the feedback when we are doing live commentary here at ESPNcricinfo. I myself have had a whinge when India were beating Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka all too easily in 2017.

Running down Test cricket seems to have become an industry, and lack of competitiveness is the stick usually used to beat it with. Test cricket might have 99 problems in a world with many more entertainment options than before, but competitiveness or quality or depth are not among them. Not in big 2024.

This wonderful year has been one of the best for this format of the sport. It began with India winning a Test in Cape Town, their only win there and only the second defeat for the hosts at their fortress in the last ten years. Almost simultaneously, on a glorious January day, West Indies and England upset the formidable hosts Australia and India in Brisbane and Hyderabad. A dynasty was brought down when New Zealand whitewashed India in India, the hosts' first home series defeat in 12 years. India quickly bounced back to win in Perth to consign Australia to their first defeat at that stadium. Bangladesh beat Pakistan in Pakistan, and have just scored a historic win in the West Indies.

There has been only one draw in the whole year, and that was thanks to the Trinidad weather. Even there, South Africa and West Indies were so enterprising they were just 97 runs or five wickets short of a result. Runs have been scored quicker in 2024 than in any other year. Wickets have never fallen quicker in a year since 1907.

Not long ago fears were expressed about the future of the game in Sri Lanka and South Africa. Both sides have allayed fears of irrelevance by virtue of their bowlers, and not superstar batters. At the time of writing, Sri Lanka hold the joint-best win-loss ratio this year, and South Africa are odds-on favourites to make the World Test Championship final.

The WTC, for which the points system is fairly straightforward, has reinvigorated teams' commitment to winning. Incentives for drawing Tests have almost disappeared. At times this push to get the most points from home Tests has resulted in interesting pitches that tend to bring the opposition bowlers into the game, which was certainly the case in Pune, Mumbai and Perth, where much more established home attacks were outgunned by inexperienced units. Current-day pitches have made away teams much more competitive: the win-loss ratio for away teams was 1.125 in 2021 and is 0.826 in 2024. These two years were great for touring teams; you need to go back more than a decade to find a year with a better win-loss ratio. And both of these are WTC years, a sign that the Test tournament has delivered despite unavoidable flaws.

In a way, Test cricket has responded to the times by dropping some of the flab. It is getting to the point quicker. No more the first two or three days of run-making in Asia and then relying on the pitch to break up for a result. The WTC has only hastened a trend that began in the mid-2010s.

Let's not forget that athletes, as a rule, will keep getting better with time. Diets, training, sports science all improve to produce better, fitter, stronger players, especially bowlers. Almost every team has a larger pool of bowlers than they did in whatever glorious era exists in our nostalgia. No more seeing off the new ball and then feasting on a drop in bowling intensity and quality. Dynasties like the ones that Australia built with two record-winning streaks in the 2000s are difficult to sustain now, not because Australia have got worse but because the competition has almost always become tougher.

A bit like how Test cricket has not become weaker, but its competition from other sources of entertainment, including from within cricket, has become stronger. All is, of course, not well with Test cricket. Along with all the good that came about, this was also a year in which South Africa sent a second-string team to New Zealand, not because of a player strike but because they needed their main players to play the domestic T20 league owned by Cricket South Africa. The recent Durban Test against Sri Lanka played out to hardly any crowds at all. West Indies continue to fail to attract the best athletes in the islands to cricket.

Most governing bodies continue to keep Test cricket inaccessible. During the Perth Test, Indian fans couldn't believe their luck when Cricket Australia put out easily accessible highlights and clips packages of the performances of Jasprit Bumrah, Virat Kohli and Yashasvi Jaiswal. They are not used to this during Tests in India. Unlike in baseball and basketball, where open access to advanced data and footage gives fans a sense of ownership of the sport, cricket continues to shoot itself in the foot by remaining exclusivist to its teams and unfriendly to its consumers.

And yet the sport and its practitioners continue to be resilient, forever evolving to make sure the longest format gets the best of them at most times. This year is no accident; it is a consequence of the quality and depth in the playing field. And 2024 is not even over yet; the greatest rivalry of our times is yet to play itself out along with South Africa's push for a WTC final slot.