The Three Test Final Conundrum

Two recent high profile Tests went the distance, or near distance in the case of the World Test championship. While the first Ashes Test in Edgbaston reaped the rewards of being a thrilling anecdote for Test cricket’s history, Australia’s sucker punch to India at the Oval had questions lurking: would a three match World Test championship be more pragmatic?

India will not be able to live down losing their second World Test championship match by a whopping margin of 209 runs. Australia proved dominant and decisive and took the bull by the horns. India, despite a plethora of stalwart names in captain Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli could not deliver the knockout blow.

Yet the headlines screamed that the match had gone down to the final day’s play, a rarity in today’s game. But was it the best advertisement for Test cricket?

On a cloudy overcast morning, Rohit Sharma chose to bowl and set Australia in to bat. The Indian bowlers made the life of the Australian top order batsmen hard, making them smell the leather as it were, peppered with short balls.

But Australia reaped the reward for patience as an unlikely hero in Usman Khawaja emerged, dropping weight like an anchor for the Australian team to rebuild its lost glory on English soil. Steve Smith was his usual impeccable busy self in the middle. But it was the ending that would have made England’s coach, Brendon McCullum, scream “That’s what I am talking about!”

Travis Head, found not only his spot in the batting line up but also a more assertive rather than aggressive pitch. On a pitch that got easier with time and with the sun coming out to play, Head seized the moment of Australia’s gardening all day and turned the game on its head by the end of day one.

If India had their work out, they also were lackadaisical in learning quickly on their feet. There were no visible demons in the pitch or in the opposition bowling without Josh Hazlewood. Mitchell Starc is sometimes a shadow of his past self, a paler shadow to captain Pat Cummins. Only an unlikely outsider in Scott Boland proved to be a persistent threat to the Indian batsmen.

The most incisive weapon in Australia’s armour was India’s own fragility with the bat. Too many Twenty20 matches in succession will do that. After two deliveries that beat the bat, when the batsman wanted nothing more than to prove himself still worthy to occupy the crease more than distracting the bowler’s line and length, the fishing net, when cast wide, caught the prize fish.

Batsmen were caught either leaving deliveries that knocked off their off stump or found reaching for one they could have well left alone. This felled the strongest including Pujara and Kohli and also, the current wonder boy of Indian cricket, Shubman Gill. Rohit Sharma has failed to stand out, runs notwithstanding, which is a sad lament on a captain who can be a bluster with the bat. But not in this format.

Things were always going to go awry and if India were kept with a bit of hope, it was because of the past reputation of their individual cricketers, and not the team, and some enterprising batting from lower order bowlers like Shardul Thakur. Questions about why Ravichandran Ashwin was benched would abound, but the skipper’s mind was made and there is no going back or how the addition of this one bowler would have changed the tide when the problem was elsewhere.

If there was bluster about India chasing down what was always going to be history making if it happened with 444 runs on the scoreboard, that the match reached the final morning of the Test match was an opportunity, a slim hope, for India to dig in their heels and make it count. At least a draw would salvage some pride and on a pitch that was not avaricious for wickets, India could have had a crack at it.

But India played as they played in the first innings, with little respite or hope. The conclusion seemed written on the wall, when Smith was digging in his heels and Head unleashed on day one. That is hardly the testament to Test cricket, where Australia kept their head down while India were unsteady on their feet.

In that light, it begs the question, is there merit in Rohit Sharma assenting to the reporters’ questions afterwards whether a three Test final would have been more fitting?

It is hard to see matches where teams come back though it has happened in instances where teams, including India, have squandered the opportunity in the first Test overseas. They only pick up their game when they have lost the initiative early, to let the opposition draw first blood.

Most world cups of any nature in any discipline in world sport suffer from pretty much the same scenario, space on the calendar and a one match that decides the fate of the teams. Not showing up at one’s best doesn’t make it an excuse to blood three, when preparation for one Test matches the preparation for three: which is next to nothing. With limited scope, even the coach and the support staff have their hands tied behind their backs.

Rohit Sharma talked about the lack of space in the cricket calendar and also, about the ideal scenario. But it must be asked, would the question of a five Test match championship or a seven Test match championship resolve the issue. One day internationals have been through this bout only to find them becoming more redundant with each passing day as Twenty20 started to rise on the horizon.

Australia faced the same challenge as India did. Even commercially Australia stand to make far more from the Ashes than they do in the World Test championship. If anything, they might have wanted to save something for the attrition-bearing nature of a rare five Test series, as the Ashes provide. India and the BCCI might have already moved on to deeper horizons with heavy pockets.

There is barely a buzz around the ICC Cricket World Cup which is not now far along. As strange as it sounds, the buzz around the Indian Premier League 2023 was trumpeted even during the India-Australia Border Gavaskar Test series. In a year when “the World Cup comes home” as it were, the heroics under Mahendra Singh Dhoni are barely being re-lived, the schedule shrouded in secrecy and teams not even jumping on the bandwagon of the non-existent hype.

Has the ship sailed on the World Cups, as far as India are concerned? Yes, a three match final seems fair and worthy. BCCI had adopted its own convoluted version of it with the Qualifier and Eliminator in the IPL. And no one is complaining because it is better than a shoot out or knock out, as one may prefer to call it.

But does that mean India have lost their faith in delivering the knockout punch? It would explain a lot about why there is not a lot of silverware to shine in the trophy cupboard.

The BCCI said a change of captaincy could do. But one look at Rohit Sharma’s body language before the World Cup matches, whether at the ICC Twenty20 World Cup or the ICC World Test championship, bears a defeated look, which is uncharacteristic to the way he bats. He looked lacklustre even leading the Mumbai Indians this season.

Was it the burden of expectations, and not the blue eyed boy as it were that the BCCI touted was the panacea to all that ailed Indian cricket including the captaincy that Virat Kohli was adamant to defend and hold on, if only to right some wrongs?

One of the reasons the tri series one day internationals in Australia in early January were something to look forward and mourned with sufficient grief when it was scrapped was because not only did it provide a twist to the tale with the presence of third team instead of a bilateral series but also, because the final was not in the hands of fate on the day. The best of three decided the winner.

Rohit Sharma claimed he would have loved such a scenario for the ICC World Test championship but that there was no space in the international calendar to allow it. But would India still put their eggs in the basket if there was?

With the IPL the priority, with franchisees and the BCCI not taking the onus of responsibility on themselves to release the players on national duty conditioning mission and the players themselves holding onto their IPL spots as their ticket for life, would the ICC World Test championship still suffer the same fate, best of three or five finals?

Test cricket could do with the thriller of five matches. But one team is steamrolled, how is a three match going to win over a one match? Questions will then be asked, whose winning with a dragged world championship? Test cricket certainly couldn’t bear being asked this question, not while its reputation is being squeezed in the name of Twenty20, slandered and disparaged and called names unbecoming.

Perhaps the bigger question to be asked, since the idea of a prolonged World Test championship is out of question from commercial interests of the world governing boards, the cricket boards and the players themselves who are also deciding the fate by deciding their own fate, is: what will it take for India to put a World Cup over an IPL trophy win?

What will lift the body language of the players to that verve and nervous energy so evident in the IPL but missing just that tad bit when it comes to bigger playgrounds?

A change of captaincy and coach has not helped and the cricket board is going nowhere. Now while there are calls for team composition overhaul and to seep in young blood, unless the mindset changes, one World Test championship or three will hardly make the difference, to the fans or the sport.

Contrast it with the energy in the first Ashes Test. Arguably a historic Test holds high energy. But so should a World Test championship with players raring to go out of the gate. While England had another four Tests to recover from losing the match from the jaws of victory, both teams played like this was their end all and be all. It told in the way that England fought to save every run and held their breath and Australia played with their hearts in their mouth.

It didn’t matter that India lost. It hurt more that India lost even before they took the field only because they didn’t look prepared for the challenge that was well within their realm of capability. They did not even play for time in the end, which is the ultimate resort in Test cricket. Until that hurts, it won’t change the status of that trophy cupboard. And it won’t matter whether it is a solitary World Cup match or three.