Those batsmen didn't grow up on a T20 diet or T20 technique. Plus it took time for T20 to become so prevalent. Now we can see how it has negatively affected test batting. Hardly anyone is able to bat time. Their technique's all over the place. Most importantly very few have the right temperament now. Poorer shot selection. Impatience. It is all quite evident.
Now we are heading towards the bazball phase in test batting where most batters coming through will look to score quickly. So expect tests to finish even sooner. Things aren't gonna to get much better on the batting front in tests.
T20 is one of reason but it is not the Main reason.
Here is a plot of overall bowling average (essentially the same as batting average, just with no balls and wides included) by year from 1990 onwards .
the seven years from 2018 to 2024 has had the lowest bowling average for a seven year span going all the way back to 1956-1962.
The fact that this recent decline (and indeed the increase in the 2000s) is a very distinct shift, rather than a gradual decline though should immediately indicate that there's a good chance that we're not just looking at an overall decline in batting standards.
If batting standards are getting worse, the average against spin outside of India should have dropped along with the pace average and it hasn't whatsoever. What has changed though is the effectiveness of seam bowling for three main reasons:
1- the wobble ball
2- kookaburra reinforcing their seam since 2020
3-Boards making more results-oriented pitches, perhaps because of the WTC.
Most of you will know about the wobble ball by now, but if not, it's deliberately holding the ball with a wide-fingered grip with seam cantered and therefore sending the ball down with the seam wobbling, meaning that the ball can move either way off the seam depending on the position the seam happens to be when the ball pitches. This is a very different technique to the one old-school seam bowlers (e.g. McGrath) would use where the goal was a bolt upright seam position.
Here is an article with much more details about it.
According to Widen cricket
This type of delivery has gone from being almost unknown before 2010 to being the stock ball of probably the majority of seam bowlers in tests nowadays.As a result, the amount of swing bowlers are getting on average has significantly decreased (since the goal of the wobble ball isn't to swing the ball) while the amount of seam movement has gone up (see that article for a source), and that's a bad thing for batters.
As as per the article, "Against a ball that moves 1.5 degrees or more in the air, batters, overall, average 26.70. But against balls that move off the pitch at least 0.75 degrees, only half the threshold for swing, the average hovers around 20".
These trends cannot be explained purely by a decline in batting performance.
