Watershed Moment For Test Cricket

India, New Zealand Battle For World Test C’ship Crown But Rain May Play Spoilsport

- Partha Bhaduri

Welcome to a sporting ‘first’, a rarity in a pandemic-ravaged world. Fitting, then, that this is about an age-old format.

Test cricket, forever in existential crisis in a post-T20 landscape, will for the first time in its 144-year history get a ‘world’ title attached to it when India play New Zealand in the World Test Championship Final in Southampton.

Never, not even in 1912 when England, South Africa and Australia played the first ever Test ‘championship,’ the Triangular Tournament, has a ‘world’ title hinged on a five-day game.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. The road to the Ageas Bowl has been long and tortuous. Originating as a germ of an idea in 2009 and repeatedly given the cold shoulder by broadcasters, this one-off final follows two complete cancellations and a controversial late tweak in the two-year points cycle.

Somehow, the two most fitting contenders have emerged. New Zealand and India are like chalk and cheese in terms of their style of play, cricketing bank balance and respective populations. What is common is the manner in which they have embraced distinctive identities to forge winning outfits, both under talismanic captains who share a rare camaraderie.