The Test Season Three follows the Australian men’s cricket team as they embark on a gruelling tour of England. They face off against cricket’s two great superpowers: India in The World Test Final, against a star-studded lineup featuring the legendary Virat Kohli; and England in the Ashes, who have redefined their game under Ben Stokes with their hyper-aggressive “BazBall” style of play. This season will explore the untold, emotional, and personal stories behind the iconic sporting moments, as theplayers are confronted with merciless opponents, hostile crowds, and the pressure of a legacy-defining tour.
Players such as Pat Cummins, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, and Alex Carey reflect on key moments with their families. They navigate the dual challenges of excelling at the highest level of cricket while juggling their treasured roles as fathers, sons, and husbands.
Leading up to the release of The Test Season Three, hitting Prime Video on May 24, Nick L’Barrow had the chance to chat with the series directors, Sheldon Wynne and Adrian Brown, about BazBall, the spirit of the game controversy, and the process of interviewing the Australian cricket team!
Nick: It’s very rare that my love of cricket and doing film and TV interviews coincide, so I’m very excited to be chatting to you both today! It’s impossible for me to watch cricket now without going, “That’s going to make The Test!”
Adrian Brown: Ha! That’s great!
Nick: And you are three seasons into The Test now, and the show has built the foundations of highlighting some exhilarating cricket, showing the dynamics between the players, and let us get to know who these guys are off the pitch. So, I’m curious to find out what the conversations are like heading into a new season. Are you looking for new avenues to explore, or are you just building on those foundations that have already been built?
Sheldon Wynne: Yeah, it’s a really interesting one. It’s a question you always have to put to yourself – what are we doing here that we haven’t done before? And I think we approach it with a pretty simplistic mentality. We’re not trying to over-engineer anything from our end.
We were really excited for the whole tour! India, England, huge rivals. But the Ashes series we had in that first season [of The Test], I must admit, I was like, “How can that possibly be topped?” And I reckon this one topped it, certainly in terms of engaging so many emotional stories from everyone. I think that’s the thing that really elevated the series, is that once one person’s story pauses, another person’s story kind of sets on fire.
Nick: I agree that this season is full of so many iconic moments. We had BazBall, the ‘Spirit of the Game’ shenanigans, Gaz getting injured – when you see a moment like that playing out in real time, what’s the first instinct or reaction of going down that narrative path?
Adrian Brown: It’s probably something in two parts. One, like, absolutely putting in on the whiteboard and going there’s a moment, a beat. But it’s interesting then when you get into the editing process, because at the time, it’s a news story, but news changes. How can we address this in six months time? Or when we reflect on it in that instant news cycle, do we treat it another way?
When you’re presenting it on screen, you can’t present it by knowing all the facts in hindsight by interjecting what is to come or this will happen. That’s why that conversation doesn’t always stack up.
You know, in the Lord’s change rooms when everything is happening, the players aren’t going to wonder what a certain moment will cause or what the aftermath will be of this moment. No, they’re going out there to play the next session.
So, we’re mindful to present things as what it was, without getting too reflective in the moment. But again, sometimes, you can’t do that. So, it’s certainly interesting seeing what is going to become a moment, and what is going to fade away.
Nick: That’s so interesting because I feel like that style of narrative leads to such raw highlights or moments. The hardest I laughed in the series was when you captured Marcus Harris after the Johnny Bairstow runout saying, “You make the rules, you fucking idiots!”
Sheldon and Adrian laugh
Nick: I have a slightly nerdy, technical question. The Test features a lot of interviews with key players reflecting on the matches. I’m curious to know whether you show them footage you’ve filmed before asking questions about a moment, or do you get their raw recollections of those moments?
Sheldon Wynne: It’s all raw recollections. And one of the great things is that we actually got them quite soon after the series finished. So, it was still pretty fresh. There wasn’t any cricket in between.
I think that was what was really good, especially this time around. We went in, and it was really Adi’s idea, we kinda built a list of questions that kept it really open about what this whole story is about.
Finding out what moments really stood out for them and made sure that instead of asking questions that would lead the witness, we we’re really keen on letting their recollections, that kind of first pass, dictate the story.
Nick: I feel like the raw emotion from them is really engaging as an audience member. And I can only assume that helps in the case of balancing the show to be a love letter for cricket fans, but also a show that can serve as an entry point for people who don’t watch or understand the game of cricket, right?
Adrian Brown: I mean, it’s a huge challenge that we are really focused in on. If we get too into the technical aspects of the game, you’re gonna lose that broader audience, I think. But at the same time, if you make it too broad, the cricket aficionados are going to go, “Hang on! I need a little bit more than this!”
One of the cases is the ball change that happens at The Oval. You could’ve spent another 25-minute talking about the ICC rules. What does this mean? What does that mean? But you’re telling a story here. We still got to move ourselves through it. It’s a really fine line.
We’ve got a couple of editors who aren’t cricket fanatics, which is always important for us because you want them to be able to give feedback on whether what’s going on is a limiting factor for someone who isn’t a cricket fan or cricket tragic. It’s just really important to set up those beats to go, “This is Lord’s. This is a standard thing in the game. But what happens [with the ball change] is such a remarkable and unusual appearance.”
Nick: There’s a brilliant, fleeting moment where we get to see the Barmy Army is full effect in Edgbaston. Were there any particular highlights that you captured from the crowd sledging, or was there anything that couldn’t make it to air?
Sheldon Wynne: It was a huge focal point. But I think in that case, there’s always kind of more there than we get to share with everyone.
But it’s brutal! We have a snippet of Ussie [Usman Khawaja] walking back from the training grounds in the morning, and having to go through the crowd, and it is brutal!
Even on the training grounds, there’s people lining up to go in, and one of my faint memories was some guy in like a WrestleMania mask yelling out, “I’m gonna take you down!” to someone. It was just constant!
Adrian Brown: Even when Marnus [Labuschagne] walks from the training nets, all the way through—and it is so off-Broadway! He’s behind sheds in this industrial sort of spot. And there’s still a couple of guys, having a cigarette, yelling out something, unrelenting. Like, you think you have a moment, but you don’t [laughs].
Nick: Australia are playing one of their big rivals, India, in November this year. Will we see more of The Test in the near future with these games coming up?
Adrian Brown: We hope so! Nothing confirmed at this stage, but we’d love to. It’s funny, I wouldn’t have even though after, you know, the early days of doing series one, that we were going to do a series two or three!
So, who knows! We’d love to. It’s been a great experience. We’ve loved every moment and been blessed to be a part of it and blessed to be working with the team. It’s been such a great experience.
Thank you to Sheldon Wynne and Adrian Brown for their time, and to Prime Video and Kit Communications for organising the interview. The Test Season 3 releases exclusively on Prime Video on May 24.
