Inaugural World Test Championship final can mark new dawn for Test cricket

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Come Friday, the ultimate ‘Test’ to crown the best cricket team in the world will begin at the Lord’s. Quite expectedly, the World Test Championship final between India and New Zealand has been a hot topic of discussion in the sports world and for all the rights reasons.

The primary reason being that there has never been a final of this sort in Test cricket’s 144-year old history. Limited to bilateral series, Test cricket first had to contend with ODI cricket (which had several multi-team tournaments) and then came the T20s in early 2000s. The latter’s advent in particular, both at the international level and with the numerous money-spinning franchise leagues around the world, meant Test cricket was in danger of becoming a redundant commodity.

Despite several top cricketers, including Virat Kohli, insisting Test cricket was the ultimate challenge in the game, the fact remained that cricket boards were more than willing to push away international series to accommodate T20s.

Ask any state association in India, and they would any day want to host a T20 match as opposed to a Test match. The reasons are simple. A T20 takes three-four hours to be completed, the logistics are cheaper and fans are more willing to pay for it because of the high-octane (Read: boundaries) action. Compared to that, Test cricket can drag till five days without a result and empty stands.

However, Test cricket too has benefitted with higher totals being chased down more frequently and games becoming more result-oriented as players are now willing to take risks. This brought forward the idea to host a multi-team Test Championship in the two-year cycle, starting from 2019, to give the format a shot in the arm.

Due to the pandemic, there have been several hiccups. But here we are with India, the biggest money-generating country in the sport, and New Zealand, a side filled with spunky players, going head-to-head for the ultimate prize.

Despite the glitz surrounding T20s, Test cricket remains the template for Indian cricketers to follow and a Rishabh Pant’s legacy will be determined by his success he achieves in his Test career.