The Six Eras of Test Cricket Guide
What an era changes, and what it doesn't
An era does not change how good the players are. Player ability is already adjusted for era when a rating is built, so a champion of the 1900s and a champion of the 2010s meet on level terms. What the era changes is the conditions: how many days and overs the match runs, when a new ball is available, the follow-on margin, whether pitches are covered, and the overall scoring and wicket tempo of the period.
The six eras
Golden Age (1877-1914). Three-day matches, uncovered pitches, one ball an innings in practice, and a smaller 150-run follow-on margin to match the shorter game.
Between the Wars (1920-1939). Four-day Tests, still uncovered, near-modern scoring with a healthy share of draws.
Timeless Test. Played to a finish with no day limit, the way some pre-war Tests genuinely were. Nobody declares for time, because there is none to run out of.
Post-War (1946-1969). Five days, uncovered pitches, and a more generous new-ball law than today. The most attritional cricket in the game's history.
Pace Age (1970-1999). Covered pitches arrive, five days, the era of the great fast-bowling attacks.
Modern (2000-present). Ninety overs a day, an 80-over new ball, and the Decision Review System, three unsuccessful reviews per side per innings, which brings umpiring uncertainty and the review call into the game.
Two findings that surprised us
Calibrating the eras against the full match archive turned up two things that run against the received wisdom. First, draws in the Golden Age were rare, not common: uncovered, rough pitches meant fast collapses and quick results even in three-day matches, so that era actually carries the highest wicket tempo of any. Second, the highest draw rates in the game's history belong to the Post-War and Pace-Age periods, despite near-modern scoring and five full days available, because the batting technique of the time was so defensive and hard to break down. The engine reproduces both, rather than the intuition.
The eras in the archive
The archive makes the shape of Test history easy to see. In the 1880s, 13.8% of Tests were drawn and a wicket cost 19.4 runs on average. By the 1900s the draw rate was 24.4% and a wicket cost 25.1. Between the wars, as pitches improved and matches lengthened, runs per wicket passed 30 for the first time, and draws rose with them: 40.4% of Tests in the 1930s and 48.9% in the 1940s ended without a winner.
The 1950s were the exception in the middle of the century. Runs per wicket fell to 28.6, the lowest of any decade after the First World War, and the draw rate dropped to 31.1%, as the decade's spinners and uncovered pitches made batting harder. Then the draws came back: 47.3% in the 1960s, 42.4% in the 1970s, 45.9% in the 1980s.
The modern game broke that pattern. Runs per wicket have stayed in the low thirties, much as they were in the 1960s, but the draw rate has fallen decade by decade: 35.7% in the 1990s, 24.6% in the 2000s, 19.4% in the 2010s and 14.4% in the 2020s so far. Wickets cost about the same as they did sixty years ago. What has changed is the speed of scoring, which leaves time in almost every match for a result. Batters score faster, bowlers attack more, and captains declare earlier to leave time to bowl the opposition out.
When captains stopped always batting first
For the first ninety years of Test cricket, winning the toss meant batting. In every decade from the 1880s to the 1960s the captain who won the toss chose to bat in 84% to 93% of matches, because on an uncovered pitch the surface only got worse and the side batting last faced whatever rain and wear had done to it.
Covered pitches changed the calculation. In the 1970s the share choosing to bat fell to 77%, and in the 1980s to 59%, the lowest of any decade. It has settled at around two in three since. With the pitch protected from rain, a captain with a strong pace attack and some moisture in the surface on the first morning could reasonably choose to bowl, and many did. The toss itself matters less than people think. In the archive, decade by decade, the side that won the toss won between 47% and 60% of the Tests that produced a result: a real edge in some periods, but a small one, and in the 2020s so far it has been slightly below half.
Why the follow-on margin moves
The follow-on margin is era-aware too. In the three and four-day matches of the early eras it sits at 150 runs; in the five-day modern game it is the familiar 200. That is not a detail: the whole game is named after that rule, and enforcing it is a different calculation when the match is shorter. There is a full guide to the follow-on, and to how a captain weighs it, in the captaincy guide.
See it happen
Choose an era and feel the difference in The Follow-On, or browse real Tests from every period, filtered by year, in the Test archive.
Sources
- CricArcade Test match archive: 2,537 Tests, 1877 to March 2024
- Figures compiled from the official match scorecards in CricArcade's archive