AOB: Quitting while you're, er, behind

There have been a lot of quitters in the news this week.

The wonderful Steve Coppell has decided to step down at Reading, Carlos Tevez is reportedly going to quit Man Utd, and the all those dastardly MP's who redecorated their homes at the tax payers expense are resigning from their posts with their heads bowed in shame. Oh, hang on a minute...

But it was another threatened departure that particularly caught my eye. It came from West Indian cricket captain, Chris Gayle, who said in an interview with the Guardian that he may give up the captaincy and pursue a career outside the test arena.

"I wouldn't be so sad", said Gayle, when asked how he would feel if Test Cricket died out. "To be honest with you, there's a possibility I might give it up – I will be giving it up, shortly."

Gayle seems to prefer the Twenty20 format, although I suspect the limitations of his Windies side (they are currently third from bottom of the world rankings) has something to do with his disinterest in what I would call "proper" cricket. And moreover, I think it would be a shame if test cricket was relegated to being a poor relation of it's newer, glitzier, cousin.

Twenty20 may be where the money is at presently, but it is still a relatively new game. Will it have the long-term appeal of test cricket? For me, the jury is still out on a format which involves a lot of brute force and very little in the way of tactics. Once the novelty value wears off, I suspect the public's interest, and therefore the sums of money being paid to players in competitions like the IPL and the ill-fated Stamford Series, will drop a bit.

I also think we're stuck in a vicious circle while there is no live test cricket on terrestrial television. With the sport in the clutches of Sky, it will always be difficult to attract new, young, fans because hardly anyone can see it. If I was growing up now, with virtually no cricket on TV, I doubt I would be as big a fan of the game as I am today. This in turn helps to add weight to the argument of those who say there is no interest in the longer form of cricket, and that Twenty20 is the way forward, and so we go round and round.

Twenty20 isn't going away anytime soon, and I can see where Gayle is coming from when he comments on how crowded the current cricket schedule is. So ideally I think we should have less test series, and get the ones we do have back on terrestrial television. Of course, the only snag about these two ideas is that neither are likely to be more profitable than the current state of affairs.

Still, it would nice to think that the International Cricket Council, the sport's governing body, could do something for the long-term good of the game, rather than the short term gain of players and administrators. I won't hold my breath on that front.