For those who worry that cricket as we know it is under threat from the game’s newest manifestation, the matches that have immediately followed on the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup have brought no joy.
In comparison to the action-packed, nail-biting, six-hitting, disco-oriented extravaganza in South Africa over the last fortnight of September, the resumption of matches of the longer, more traditional variety has been staid, predictable and lacklustre.
That they should have involved India and Pakistan, combatants in the pulsating Twenty20 final in Johannesburg who both now find themselves on the losing side on home soil, make the distinction ever starker.
On the first day of the first Test against Pakistan last week, in the near deserted National Stadium in Karachi, South Africa helped themselves to 294 for three from the allocated 90 overs.
A rate of 3.26 runs an over was pretty good going for Test cricket, absolutely pedestrian to what went on in South Africa over the preceding two weeks.
The five days yielded five sixes. Yuvraj Singh belted more in a single over in the Twenty20.
Presented with a similar scenario following World Series Cricket’s breakthrough in Australia with night cricket, the white ball, coloured uniforms and the same razzamatazz that marked the World Twenty20, Lynton Taylor, Kerry Packer’s right-hand man, proclaimed such cricket the game of the future and predicted the demise of Test cricket within 10 years.
That was 30 years ago. Much the same is now being said about Twenty20 but it is not Test cricket that is in jeopardy so much as the format popularized by Packer and extolled by Lynton Taylor.
Tests have, to use the appropriate clich
