Our former President, Robert Mugabe, is quoted widely as saying that, “Cricket civilizes people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen.” Other people have different views on cricket, though. Robin Williams, the actor and comedian, declared that “Cricket is basically baseball on Valium” while the playwright George Bernard Shaw believed that “Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.” There are many though who have been confounded by it; Paul Furness stated that “You have got to love a game that can sometimes last five days and end in a draw”. 

This latter quotation picks up on the traditional format of the sport at international level, where Test matches are played over five days with each side having the opportunity to bat twice. For a long time, though, there was no limit to the length of the Test matches, thus eliminating the need to declare an innings over or worry about rain stopping play; these were the ‘Timeless Tests’. The longest Test match ever, one between South Africa and England in 1939, lasted twelve days and only ended because the England players had to board their boat home, thus still culminating in a draw!

Of course, nowadays, international cricket matches are not confined to the five-day Test matches but also have the fifty-over version as well as the T20 version, each providing different tests for the players. And there is the key to all the types of cricket fixtures; each is a test, in nature (deliberately) if not in name, and the reason we play inter-school or inter-house fixtures at school level is to test our pupils. How do they cope when placed in certain scenarios?

We do not complain about sports fixtures happening, even though they are tests. Indeed, children want to play matches, to be tested. While there are many who feel that written tests and exams are unfair on children, as they put the child under pressure, the same folk often do not complain about the sporting tests. Yes, some children struggle under the pressure of exams; we need to help them know how to manage that, as life is full of tests and pressure, rather than avoid putting them through these dreaded tests. And that is why sporting tests are so valuable and helpful.

Some people wish to replace exams with ‘Continuous Assessment’ though it may appear to still be testing, though with more time and more opportunity to get help, from books or from people. They may be assessed but not tested; being tested means being put under pressure. Then there are others who allow ‘open book’ tests’, being not so much a test of what is remembered but rather what needs to be worked out, with help – time is pressure. Then again, others nowadays speak of ‘projects’ instead of tests. Sadly, though, for coaches, school fixtures are their tests, not the children’s.

Whatever terminology we use, however long the tests may be, they test us. They do so not to see how good or bad we are, not to say where we come in the pecking order, but to show whether we have learned anything and whether we can apply such knowledge when under pressure. Has learning happened? That is the test. Sporting matches are also a test of what we have learned; they are a test of our resilience, of our patience, of our endurance. School fixtures also test the thinking and prejudice of parents.

Why, then, are we afraid of tests? Generally, they will generate stress and we do not like stress – we want to chill! And because they put us under pressure (of time, results, urgency or apparent significance), we are fearful of failing as well as of the shame and embarrassment that may come with it. And the more we think people are watching, the more mistakes we make. That is why it is even more important that we allow our pupils to undertake sporting tests on their own, just as they are when doing an academic test. Coaches should not be shouting the answers to the children during the test of a fixture. Parents do not help their child in a written test; so too with sport.

There is a time for learning but there is also very definitely a time for testing too. Along with that, there is a reason for testing. Life is a constant test. And life is also a timeless test. The more we learn to play and live with pressure, the more able we will become. Children need sport; they need tests. And remember; it civilizes people and creates good gentlemen – under pressure. You will love that.