Dear Test cricket

Dear Test Cricket,
Hope all is good, with you, wherever you are being played — Lords, Oval, Kingsmead, Gabba, Galle, Wankhede.  I am happy to see you’re ageing well, no cobwebs, no creaky bones, no joint aches, a constant attempt to re-invent yourself, even though the system/powers that be, have been trying to retire you for awhile now. “Who’s going to watch Test Cricket for five days?’ is the refrain.

They’re trying  to close you down because apparently you don’t give instant gratification, you’re a slow burn, so to speak. T20 is the flavour of the month, (Sachin even wanted T5 tournaments), but with the just concluded India-England Test series, the Ashes approaching, the five-day epic, still outlasts the five hour extravaganza. The battles, the joys, the sorrows, the contests and camaraderies were all there, Siraj and Gill, and Woakes, his arm in plaster. Test matches, have always been cricket royalty, the equivalent of a Michelin five star meal vs junk food — working your way through each course, savouring the sauces and the condiments, rolling it all around your tongue.  I’m old school, let me confess, old fashioned when it comes to cricket, its white clothes and a red ball — weaned on radio commentary, in the early ’70s, blaring out of a Bush transistor, as Tony Cozier and Anant Setalwad created mental pictures for us. This morphed into watching the long format on a black and white ECTV in the living room adjusting the indoor antenna, the crowd demanding Salim Durrani to hit a sixer and him obliging — putting on white long pants, and the long sleeved shirt, and bowling at the Azad and Cross maidans, shining the red “cherry” myself on the white flannels. My mother trying to get the red marks out with Surf Excel—I’ve never understood the need to simplify and shorten a sport. Football is still and will always be a 90-minute battle, Grand Slams in tennis are still best of five setters, so why mess with a format in cricket, why “tamasha-ise” it… why “circus-ise” it?