Former South Africa batter Daryll Cullinan has cautioned that modern Test cricket is being pressed into service as a finishing school for players who arrive ill-prepared to handle the moving red ball — a role it was never designed to fill. Writing in his column for Cricinfo, Cullinan traced the problem to two converging failures: the collapse of the traditional first-class apprenticeship and the widespread misreading of Australia batter Steve Smith's unconventional technique as a universal template.

The Lost Apprenticeship

Cullinan argued that the old domestic circuit — particularly English county cricket — served as a crucible where batters encountered enough variation in conditions, line, and seam movement to develop structural solutions on their own terms. That extended exposure, he wrote, gave the game the final vote on whether a method was sound, regardless of how it looked in theory.

'The old apprenticeship offered a safeguard we have not properly replaced. Theory never got the final vote there; the game did. A batter could arrive with almost any method he liked, and over a long season the ball would reveal whether the method survived serious examination,' Cullinan wrote.

He was unequivocal that the preparation pipeline has deteriorated: 'Without that kind of process, Test cricket is left to be the finishing school, which it should never be. The school before a batter gets to the top is simply not good enough now, the way it was in the past.'

The Steve Smith Misreading

Cullinan reserved pointed criticism for what he described as a coaching industry that has mistaken Steve Smith's individual genius for a replicable system. Smith, he acknowledged, is one of the most successful unconventional batters in the history of the game — but that success rests on a depth of self-knowledge and constant in-match adjustment that cannot be coached into others.

'Enter Steve Smith, the chief influencer. Few batters have challenged convention as successfully, and still scored as heavily against the best bowling in the world as he has. The mistake was assuming what worked for Smith should become a template for everyone else,' Cullinan wrote.

He added: 'Smith understood his own method intimately and adjusted it constantly to the bowler and the conditions in front of him. An elite player proving something can work does not prove that everyone should be taught it. Smith's greatness has duped a whole generation of coaches and players — which is a tribute to his genius.'

Why Technical Fixes Fail Under Test Pressure

Cullinan also took aim at modern coaching's over-reliance on biomechanics and academic language, arguing that no technical intervention delivered inside a Test match — the highest-pressure environment in the game — can substitute for the thousands of hours of trial and failure that the old domestic system provided.

'The great players were not built by removing difficulty from their path. They were built by spending enough time, facing enough failure and enough real consequence, to work out for themselves what actually did the job,' he wrote.

What Cullinan Says Must Change

The former South Africa batter called for a restoration of genuinely challenging domestic environments as the only credible path to producing red-ball specialists. He was sceptical that white-ball formats or sports science alone could fill the void left by the decline of long-form domestic cricket.

'We cannot replace that process with cricket science, or the belief that other formats can somehow meet the same demands by different means. If we genuinely want players who cope better with a moving ball, they need the chance to develop that skill well before Test cricket asks it of them,' Cullinan wrote.

He concluded with a stark warning: without structural reform in the preparation pathway, teams will continue to cycle through batters, chasing continuity and a winning culture that proves elusive. Performances against the moving ball, he argued, risk becoming anomalies rather than evidence of anything durably built.