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The Final Test: The Uncertain Future of Cricket’s First-Class Game
'A compelling book… Test cricket is hanging on. It's a worry' – Graham Gooch
'Huw Turbervill is the ultimate passionate polemicist for the Test format' – David Gower OBE
THE EDITOR OF THE CRICKETER GOES ON A SOUL-SEARCHING JOURNEY TO DISCOVER WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR TEST CRICKET
The Final Test is a love letter to cricket and a manifesto in favour of the Test format. Taking readers on a nostalgic journey, Huw Turbervill shares stories of cricket past and present and of the incredible characters the sport has encountered over the Viv Richards, Graham Gooch, David Gower, Merv Hughes, Richard Hadlee and more.
In a tumultuous sporting landscape, the cricket community, however, seems undecided about the future of Test cricket. The IPL is expanding, The Hundred still seems to dominate the thoughts of English cricket's controllers, and the men's Ashes in 2023 was relegated to a narrow window. As T20 keeps growing internationally and domestically like Japanese knotweed, attracting more fans than ever before, is it still possible for the longer format to retain its wistful shine?
Huw asks a five-star panel of cricketers, commentators and writers if Test cricket can truly survive the next decade. Shouldn't we keep a tradition filled with memories of days gone by? Could we instead try to maintain a healthy balance of formats all year round? How about accepting that times need to change? Are Huw and others too nostalgic and conservative? This book is the ultimate soul-searching journey around the great game.
'Huw Turbervill is the ultimate passionate polemicist for the Test format' – David Gower OBE
THE EDITOR OF THE CRICKETER GOES ON A SOUL-SEARCHING JOURNEY TO DISCOVER WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR TEST CRICKET
The Final Test is a love letter to cricket and a manifesto in favour of the Test format. Taking readers on a nostalgic journey, Huw Turbervill shares stories of cricket past and present and of the incredible characters the sport has encountered over the Viv Richards, Graham Gooch, David Gower, Merv Hughes, Richard Hadlee and more.
In a tumultuous sporting landscape, the cricket community, however, seems undecided about the future of Test cricket. The IPL is expanding, The Hundred still seems to dominate the thoughts of English cricket's controllers, and the men's Ashes in 2023 was relegated to a narrow window. As T20 keeps growing internationally and domestically like Japanese knotweed, attracting more fans than ever before, is it still possible for the longer format to retain its wistful shine?
Huw asks a five-star panel of cricketers, commentators and writers if Test cricket can truly survive the next decade. Shouldn't we keep a tradition filled with memories of days gone by? Could we instead try to maintain a healthy balance of formats all year round? How about accepting that times need to change? Are Huw and others too nostalgic and conservative? This book is the ultimate soul-searching journey around the great game.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 24, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 7, 2025
I have many contrasting thoughts about the book and the author, as his heart is in the right place but his prose style is infuriating. His editorials in The Cricketer rarely have sentences without an m-dash or an ellipsis and I wish that he wrote in full sentences rather than interrupting clauses or trailing off. I'd hoped he'd adapted this style for this book, which consisted of several interviews, a few essays, and summaries of test cricket across the decades, in an examination of what was happening to test cricket.
The second sentence didn't fill me with confidence however and foreshadowed the remainder of the book: "The cricket season is still alive (just)... but the unforgiving winter beckons." When Jarrod Kimber mentions that films have changed since the 80s, he has to interject with his own assessment, as he does in the same interview about music in his formative years, even though this was only added as his own analysis after the conversation. To adapt a line from one of his favourites comedies The Inbetweeners, can you stop with the interruptions for just one minute?
Overall I found the interviews to be the best parts of the book as they offered different perspectives, in particular those of players. It was good he'd asked active cricketer Reece Topley as otherwise it was limited to figures who retired before T20 became popular, and it is much easier to say you would be committed to the test game when you don't have to make the choice. One thing I found lacking from either side of the debate was a convincing argument as to what they liked about certain formats. Don Topley came closest, arguing that first class cricket had itself changed due to the fitness demands of bowlers and the playing surface, but even then, he referenced the popularity of T20 with the fans rather than saying what he liked about the format.
Turbervill also cited the importance of test cricket to the English TV contract, but this is a dangerous game to me, as that only makes it easier to ditch the format should it prove unprofitable in future. A former county chair pointed out in the magazine the author edits that the proportion of the TV deal allocated to the Hundred is increasing in the ECB's budgeting for future years, suggesting the value of international matches is decreasing even where test cricket is still popular. Other than a short mention of it by Kimber, I also felt the book was missing a fundamental aspect of why the sport is changing. It is not merely that there is more money in T20, but that the private owners of the participating teams are motivated by making money, rather than cricket boards whose primary loyalty is to the sport in general. As a result, the tournaments and their rules are designed to maximise returns rather than being a way of monetising a competition with integrity, and boards feel correctly that they have to compete with their own versions of franchise leagues.
I was less enamoured with the chronological summaries of test series which were a bit dry, and have been covered elsewhere in 'my experience of cricket' prose by the likes of Berkmann, Simkins and Emma John, but the short section on journalism was quite insightful. I couldn't tell whether the 'Serb' Ivanisevic serving on match point in '1995' was an inside joke or major blunder, but otherwise his experiences as a writer, sub-editor and managing editor were succinct while demonstrating how the cricket media has changed.
Overall, he explored the issue in a way that was more casual than I'd have liked and the convincing case for first-class cricket was missing. Too often I find the arguments in favour of the longer format don't extend too far beyond "I like it" and that was true here too, even if there were nods to the higher emphasis on skill and the ability of a match to endure twists and turns that just don't exist in the shorter version of the game. I understood Turbervill's exasperation at the Hundred spectator whose reasons for attending would have applied equally to the Blast, but his own appeals to players resorted to 'you cut your teeth in this format!'. The problem is that "I like it" isn't that persuasive when more people like something else, and the only optimism I felt was that even T20's supporters seemed to rely on its popularity rather than the intrinsic nature of the game itself. I regularly go to championship matches on the basis that they won't be around for much longer, and there was little in this book that convinced me I'm wrong to think that.
The second sentence didn't fill me with confidence however and foreshadowed the remainder of the book: "The cricket season is still alive (just)... but the unforgiving winter beckons." When Jarrod Kimber mentions that films have changed since the 80s, he has to interject with his own assessment, as he does in the same interview about music in his formative years, even though this was only added as his own analysis after the conversation. To adapt a line from one of his favourites comedies The Inbetweeners, can you stop with the interruptions for just one minute?
Overall I found the interviews to be the best parts of the book as they offered different perspectives, in particular those of players. It was good he'd asked active cricketer Reece Topley as otherwise it was limited to figures who retired before T20 became popular, and it is much easier to say you would be committed to the test game when you don't have to make the choice. One thing I found lacking from either side of the debate was a convincing argument as to what they liked about certain formats. Don Topley came closest, arguing that first class cricket had itself changed due to the fitness demands of bowlers and the playing surface, but even then, he referenced the popularity of T20 with the fans rather than saying what he liked about the format.
Turbervill also cited the importance of test cricket to the English TV contract, but this is a dangerous game to me, as that only makes it easier to ditch the format should it prove unprofitable in future. A former county chair pointed out in the magazine the author edits that the proportion of the TV deal allocated to the Hundred is increasing in the ECB's budgeting for future years, suggesting the value of international matches is decreasing even where test cricket is still popular. Other than a short mention of it by Kimber, I also felt the book was missing a fundamental aspect of why the sport is changing. It is not merely that there is more money in T20, but that the private owners of the participating teams are motivated by making money, rather than cricket boards whose primary loyalty is to the sport in general. As a result, the tournaments and their rules are designed to maximise returns rather than being a way of monetising a competition with integrity, and boards feel correctly that they have to compete with their own versions of franchise leagues.
I was less enamoured with the chronological summaries of test series which were a bit dry, and have been covered elsewhere in 'my experience of cricket' prose by the likes of Berkmann, Simkins and Emma John, but the short section on journalism was quite insightful. I couldn't tell whether the 'Serb' Ivanisevic serving on match point in '1995' was an inside joke or major blunder, but otherwise his experiences as a writer, sub-editor and managing editor were succinct while demonstrating how the cricket media has changed.
Overall, he explored the issue in a way that was more casual than I'd have liked and the convincing case for first-class cricket was missing. Too often I find the arguments in favour of the longer format don't extend too far beyond "I like it" and that was true here too, even if there were nods to the higher emphasis on skill and the ability of a match to endure twists and turns that just don't exist in the shorter version of the game. I understood Turbervill's exasperation at the Hundred spectator whose reasons for attending would have applied equally to the Blast, but his own appeals to players resorted to 'you cut your teeth in this format!'. The problem is that "I like it" isn't that persuasive when more people like something else, and the only optimism I felt was that even T20's supporters seemed to rely on its popularity rather than the intrinsic nature of the game itself. I regularly go to championship matches on the basis that they won't be around for much longer, and there was little in this book that convinced me I'm wrong to think that.
June 25, 2025
An affecting and compelling love letter to Test and County cricket.
July 17, 2025
Just has a moan without offering any solutions
June 9, 2025
I both loved and hated this book, hence the 3 stars.
I loved it because I love Test Match Cricket (TMC) as much as the author does. His “hero” references align with my own - Gower, Botham (for his cricket, not his politics), Gooch, Richards, etc. - and the appeal for the survival of TMC is impassioned and heartfelt which resonates powerfully with me.
But, but, but… while the emotional case is made - again and again - he never quite makes the rational/commercial case for TMC. He states more than once that “test matches make money” but never paints the full financial picture, or compares it to the rise and rise of the short formats. He doesn’t talk to younger players, or fans. It’s almost as if he is avoiding what they might say…
Look, I do personally think that cricket is in a mess. There’s too much, so that even dedicated fans (like me) don’t really care about any one result - there’ll be another game along in just a jiffy. But this book, for as well written and powerfully felt as it is, offers no solutions. Books like this - I’m thinking also of Michael Henderson’s (beautifully written and culturally rich) That Will Be England Gone - are all too frequent: old timers (basically, anyone over about 45 who lived a bit before the white ball started to dominate the game - wanting to hark back to earlier times. Ain’t gonna happen.
it’s a good read, but only goes so far.
I loved it because I love Test Match Cricket (TMC) as much as the author does. His “hero” references align with my own - Gower, Botham (for his cricket, not his politics), Gooch, Richards, etc. - and the appeal for the survival of TMC is impassioned and heartfelt which resonates powerfully with me.
But, but, but… while the emotional case is made - again and again - he never quite makes the rational/commercial case for TMC. He states more than once that “test matches make money” but never paints the full financial picture, or compares it to the rise and rise of the short formats. He doesn’t talk to younger players, or fans. It’s almost as if he is avoiding what they might say…
Look, I do personally think that cricket is in a mess. There’s too much, so that even dedicated fans (like me) don’t really care about any one result - there’ll be another game along in just a jiffy. But this book, for as well written and powerfully felt as it is, offers no solutions. Books like this - I’m thinking also of Michael Henderson’s (beautifully written and culturally rich) That Will Be England Gone - are all too frequent: old timers (basically, anyone over about 45 who lived a bit before the white ball started to dominate the game - wanting to hark back to earlier times. Ain’t gonna happen.
it’s a good read, but only goes so far.
November 16, 2025
I enjoyed and resonated with many elements of The Final Test. The positioning of test cricket as the pinnacle; the decade by decade reviews of test history; the insights into the minds of many legendary cricketers and the world of cricket journalism. I also empathise with where the book comes from - the desperate desire to keep that most wonderful of sports alive for as long as possible - but there are a few unavoidable detractors for me. The writing is very wedded to the authors era, the decade reviews get shorter and shorter as they go on and there are some questions asked of the more modern regime that I feel aren't fully explored. Turbevill also seems to fall into the trap of dismissing those coming through the industry in recent years as being fully aboard the T20 train and therefore casting his opinions aside as outdated. I clearly can't speak for his experiences but I know of plenty of cricket journalists younger than myself that champion the longest format and feel the same fearful slipping of our great game. It just seems a little counterproductive to dismiss them all as he appears to numerous times, instead of continuing to attempt to engage in conversation - it seems to me that those invested in saving test cricket need to band together, not shout into their respective section of the wind. Finally, a common critism levelled at The Final Test is that it doesn't offer any reasonable solution to the uncertain future. However, I feel it's only fair to point out that Turberville never professes to have the answer. The problem, therefore, is that he speaks for the many in his musings on why test cricket is the pinnacle, then articulately explains the problem, and we are simply left to stew in the possible (probable?) reality of our wonderful shared game slipping from view. It is not a book that offers hope. So, while I undoubtedly enjoyed a good deal of The Final Test, I can't bring myself to score it higher than a three.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews