In the glorious annals of Test cricket, which will ring in its 150th anniversary next year, some numbers have acquired permanence over time.

Sir Don Bradman’s otherworldly Test average of 99.94 will forever be iconic. Sunil Gavaskar’s 10,122 runs, on account of the Indian being the first in the world to cross 10K, is epochal. The mild-mannered Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan’s 800 scalps, snared with a ferocious snap of his right arm, is another monumental figure.

The magic figure

More broadly, in sync with the sport’s tendency to set benchmarks through statistics, a career average of 50 has long been the magic figure for batters in white flannels. Operating in another stratosphere without doubt was Bradman, whose average over 52 Tests from 1928 to 1948 is an insurmountable peak of the kind unlikely to be witnessed again in all of sport.

Moreover, Bradman’s influence extended beyond the field, with his runs acting as a balm to hordes of Australians suffering the grim consequences of the Great Depression.

For the rest, who cannot reach such dizzy heights, averaging half as much as the pre-eminent Australian over a reasonably lengthy career is a measure of bona fide greatness. To do so, a batter must be able to straddle different worlds, ranging from the fast and bouncy surfaces of Australia and South Africa in the southern hemisphere to the dusty, spin-friendly decks of the subcontinent.

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But in a landscape where so much of the Test game is undergoing transformation, there is perhaps a change unfolding here as well.

Among those with a minimum of 2000 runs starting January 1, 2020, only three have achieved the gold standard of 50 — the recently retired Kane Williamson of New Zealand and a pair of Englishmen in Joe Root and Harry Brook. The corresponding data for preceding decades point to a perceptible shift: 11 batters had a 50-plus average from 2010 to 2019, and as many as 19 from 2000 to 2009.

A multitude of factors

It isn’t by happenstance that the beginning of this shift coincides with the introduction of the World Test Championship (WTC) in 2019. Ever since teams have been incentivised to pursue silverware at the end of every two-year cycle, they have prioritised optimising home advantage by looking to win as many games as possible in familiar climes.

The chance to bag 12 points for a victory in the WTC, as opposed to four for a draw, encourages the pushing of the envelope. Result-oriented surfaces, where ball dominates bat, have thus become common.

The venues in Australia offer a striking example. In years gone by, most pitches Down Under had sharp pace and steep bounce, but they were also eminently favourable to batters who relished the cut and pull. Once the new Kookaburra ball lost its lustre, the willow-wielders were in prime position to make hay under the baking sun.

Now, the balance has swayed significantly in favour of the pacers. So much so that three of the last seven Tests have finished inside two days, with the fast men reaping the rewards. Even the Sydney Cricket Ground, traditionally conducive to guile and flight, has turned into a fast-bowling paradise.

“Probably averaging 35 with the bat is the same as averaging 45 a decade ago. I think the wickets have changed that much,” Aussie quick Josh Hazlewood told the media recently.

Changed thinking

In the view of former India opener Wasim Jaffer, a patient accumulator of runs during his playing days, a rise in result-oriented strips shouldn’t be an alibi for batters’ shortcomings. He contends that the prevailing mindset of run-makers, given their routine exposure to white-ball cricket, seldom lends itself to digging in and grinding out a meaningful score.

Increasingly, to paraphrase Jaffer, finding batters in the mould of Rahul Dravid or Cheteshwar Pujara is going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

“As soon as the ball seams, swings or spins, and conditions are a little in favour of the bowlers, the batters want to attack their way out of trouble,” Jaffer told The Hindu. “You’re not going to find somebody like Dravid or Pujara who will play out a session or a spell and cash in a little later. We are generally living in a time where patience is non-existent.”

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Jaffer concurred with the broad sentiment that many of the pitches of late haven’t been straightforward for batting. However, he cited the example of Headingley 2002, one of India’s famous overseas wins in which Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly peeled off centuries, to assert that such challenges have been conquered.

“The mindset is not there to survive. As a result, even balanced pitches become talked about because the batters don’t stay for long. They make it look tougher at times,” he argued, before recollecting, “I was part of the Indian team in Leeds in 2002. The conditions were very difficult. Still, the Test went into the fifth day. We had batters like Sachin, Sourav and Rahul. They survived the tough phases, and then it became easier.”

More than one reason

When it comes to defensive technique too, there has probably been a downturn. A case in point is the waning ability of Indian batters against spin on tracks assisting turn.

While the presence of the Decision Review System (DRS) has added another degree of difficulty, for batters are far more prone to being adjudged leg-before, very few appear adept at using the depth of the crease to move fully forward or back. Over the past two home seasons, India has borne the brunt, against New Zealand left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner and South African offie Simon Harmer.

The bowlers, often condemned to anonymity in the shorter formats, deserve their share of the credit. The widespread use of the wobble-seam delivery, a type of release where the seam isn’t perfectly upright on purpose, is an illustration of the ingenuity of fast bowlers coming to the fore.

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Though the delivery isn’t exactly new, there seems to be greater awareness among a wider pool of quicks about the benefits of the seam wobbling on its way to the batter. For the men facing up, in comparison to dealing with swing through the air, there are no obvious clues to lean on when the ball deviates off the surface after pitching.

“It’s an additional weapon in the armoury of fast bowlers. The wobble seam sometimes confuses you as a batter. If it lands in the right spot and darts back in, it creates problems,” Jaffer observed.

It brings us interestingly to Virat Kohli, Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane. Formidable occupants of India’s middle-order until three years ago, they have all retired from Test cricket over the past 15 months.

At the time of their exits, the fact that none of them finished with an average above 50 was perceived to be a blot on their careers. It may not be so in the years to come.

How often does a draw feel like a defeat? And a stalemate assume the hue of a victory? Often enough, Shubman Gill will insist.

Despite their own uneasy recent dalliance with the five-day format, India would have fancied their chances of bearding the Sri Lankan lion in its own den in a two-Test series that is pretty much the norm when the world’s most sought-after side isn’t playing against Australia or England.

India hadn’t lost a series in this country since 2008 and arrived early this month sitting on a five-Test winning streak on Sri Lankan soil. Even though their last visit was in 2017, they had reason to believe the hosts were ripe for the taking.

Significant result

The script seemed to be holding true. Notwithstanding pockets of defiance from their young guns, led by the exceptional Sonal Dinusha, Sri Lanka slumped to a 185-run rout in Galle in the first Test. The result assumed a more significant hue because India were without two-fifths of their first-choice bowling attack — Jasprit Bumrah and Washington Sundar were missing through injuries — but still won a rain-hit encounter with quite a bit to spare.

There was excellent reason, therefore, to aspire for a 2-0 sweep ahead of the second Test at the SSC ground. Sri Lanka, already without Pathum Nissanka and Kusal Mendis, were dealt another unkind cut when Dinesh Chandimal was ruled out of the second Test after hurting his neck while fielding in Galle. But as it turned out, his replacement, Pasindu Sooriyabandara, had a great game at the SSC, desperately unlucky to miss out of centuries in both innings.

Dinusha delights

Dinusha, however, ensured that a similar fate didn’t befall him. Ahead of this series, the 25-year-old left-hander had played just three Tests but had showcased his ability and his temperament, not least in the Caribbean in June-July when he reeled off a sequence of 43, 12 not out, 92 and 28 in the two Tests.

It should have been fair warning well heeded; it will be presumptuous to say that India didn’t pay much attention to the young man, but they didn’t crack the Dinusha puzzle throughout the series, which is one of the main reasons they had to settle for a 1-0 scoreline despite dominating the second Test too for large stretches.

Dinusha batted for a little less than 20 hours in making 420 runs from 722 deliveries, the single point of difference as the Lankans ground out a fabulous draw after being forced to follow on in the second Test.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom from an Indian point of view. Devdutt Padikkal grabbed his chances with both hands in his first Tests in more than 20 months. In the absence of Sai Sudharsan, he took giant strides towards making the No. 3 slot his own with hundreds in the first innings of both games.

The volume of runs was impressive, but so was his presence in the middle. In further signs of his evolution as a dependable, oftentimes aggressive all-format batter, he treated the bowling with just about the respect it deserved, using the offside as his preferred area of scoring and looking equally comfortable against pace and spin.

India will find it very hard to look beyond him for the one-drop position when they play two Tests in New Zealand in November. After all, how can you overlook the credentials of someone as consistent as the Karnataka left-hander was in Sri Lanka?

And then, there was Dhruv Jurel, justifying the faith of the Gautam Gambhir-led think-tank which was sure that the wicketkeeper-batter was the answer to their prayers for a dependable middle-order batter who could play spin with soft hands, deftness of feet and no gremlins of self-doubt.

Assured batting

Alongside Sai Sudharsan and Padikkal, Jurel was one of the three batters Gambhir was keen should be a part of the India ‘A’ side that arrived on these shores for a shadow tour towards the end of June. Admittedly, neither Galle nor the SSC was a rank turner like Kolkata had been against South Africa in November, but Jurel didn’t put a foot wrong either in front of the stumps — he had a half-century in the first Test which he topped with his second ton in the next — or behind it when Rishabh Pant sat out much of the Sri Lankan first innings in Colombo with an assortment of blows to his body.

K.L. Rahul was dependable without going big while Pant was, well, Pant — exhilarating, unpredictable, entertaining and compelling. Maybe Gill will be a little disappointed that he didn’t join the list of centurions, but his batting looked in decent order, as did Yashasvi Jaiswal’s even if he found novel ways of courting dismissals.

Then, there was Prasidh Krishna. Ahead of the series, Gill was asked if he had a difficult choice to make between the Karnataka pacer and the uncapped Gurnoor Brar as Mohammed Siraj’s new-ball partner. The skipper barely batted an eyelid when he said that Prasidh was bowling the best with the red ball that he had ever seen him, and the strapping quick didn’t disappoint.

Even on the placid decks on offer, he worked up good pace, extracted appreciable bounce and kept the batters honest. When he pitched the ball up, there was movement which, allied with pace in the region of 140 kmph, made him a tricky proposition.

Up for the challenge

Prasidh was up for any challenge, including doing the dirty job of trying to soften up the batters with his shortish length, and is shaping up into an excellent support act for Bumrah and Siraj. India will need their pacers to fire on all cylinders when they go to New Zealand, so from that perspective, the development of Prasidh is perhaps the single greatest takeaway for the decision-making group from this three-week sojourn to the Emerald Isle.

But there are worrying signs aplenty too, not least when it comes to back-up spin options. Despite starting his Test career with so much promise in New Chandigarh when he took six wickets in the first innings against Afghanistan, and despite his ten-wicket match haul in Galle, Manav Suthar is still very much a work in progress.

In Colombo, his craft had to play second fiddle to the slowness of the SSC strip; there was bounce aplenty, which took bowled and leg before out of the equation, but the left-arm spinner was slow to respond when the Sri Lankan batters resorted to the sweep and the reverse sweep.

It might appear a touch harsh on someone who was only playing in his third Test, but this is an early education for Suthar and he will do well to heed the lessons if he aspires to step into the shoes of Ravindra Jadeja going forward and become the lead bowler around whom the Indian spin attack will revolve in the future.

Debut to forget

While Suthar did show signs of promise, Saransh Jain had a disappointing debut — and there is no way to sugarcoat that. On the radar of those involved in talent-identification and selection matters for a while now, Jain is an experienced hand at 33, with more than 50 first-class appearances under his belt for various outfits.

His first delivery in Test cricket was a no-ball, which can perhaps be put down to nerves, but he bowled six more of them across the two innings, which couldn’t have pleased anyone, least of all new spin bowling coach Sairaj Bahutule. But it wasn’t just the no-balls that were grating. While he did show reasonable control, the threat quotient was barely perceptible.

Saransh wouldn’t have been here if Washington was available but as a fallback alternative, he has a long way to go. In some ways, it points to a slight thinning of resources in the spin cupboard, which ought to worry those in the corridors of power because for so long now, India have got used to having the now-retired R. Ashwin and Jadeja to spin their webs of deception and lure batters to their doom.

After a lull, India have plenty of fast-bowling options to summon despite Mukesh Kumar and Akash Deep and Harshit Rana and Nitish Kumar Reddy spending a lot of time in the infirmary. But for the traditional land of spin to struggle to unearth an incisive off-spinner is a little hard to fathom and harder still to digest.

Jain deserves the benefit of doubt — after all, this was Test No. 1 and maybe he did have the proverbial ordinary one-off game — but for him to set himself up as a semi-long-term option, there must be obvious signs of improvement.

This tour in general, and the second Test particularly, was a steep learning curve for the captain. It’s been a little over 14 months since Gill first led the Test team, in England in Leeds last June. Captaincy looks simple from the outside but entails plenty of decision-making on the fly, even in Test cricket, without second-guessing oneself.

He was handicapped by a rapidly softening ball in Galle and by an SSC surface that had bounce but hardly any pace. Some of the fields he employed were strange, there was a definite occasional slant towards passivity, and the move to almost ignore trying to get Dinusha out on the final day of the series and target the other end was little short of self-defeating.

Mixed run

Gill has had a mixed run as captain — 2-2 in England, 2-0 at home against West Indies, defeat in his only Test against South Africa in Kolkata when he faced a mere three deliveries before contracting a neck injury, a hammering of Afghanistan and now this 1-0 success in Sri Lanka, his first overseas victory as skipper.

The journey has been challenging and exciting, but daunting outings lie in store in the red-ball version before he starts to focus exclusively on the 50-over format ahead of the World Cup in southern Africa in the second half of next year.

India haven’t won a Test in New Zealand since 2009 when Mahendra Singh Dhoni led them to a famous series triumph, and their last visit in 2020 was an unmitigated disaster as they were soundly beaten in both matches.

New Zealand will test the technique and the character of the batting group with its seam-friendly conditions, after which Australia will come calling for five Tests in India. Gill must be on top of his game — as lead batter and as leader — and towards that end, Sri Lanka was a timely, useful wake-up call.

Sri Lanka Cricket interim committee chairman Eran Wickramaratne. File
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

It was 25 years ago that Mark Butcher scored a monumental 173 not out in England’s successful chase against Australia in the Headingley Test. He scored seven other Test hundreds, some of them against the most fearsome attacks. He is now a popular commentator and sharp analyst of the game. Excerpts from Butcher’s exclusive interview with The Hindu at Lord’s:

Your comparison of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi with Garry Sobers earlier this year got a lot of attention. It was fascinating, how you proved, through the help of visuals, the similarities in the bat swing, hand speed…

I watched him make that 175 [off 80 balls] in the Under-19 World Cup final [against England at Harare]. I was struck by that incredible, long, high backlift, the huge follow-through, the complete circle almost where the bat finishes around, tapping him on the spine. You know, Sobers used to hit a lot of shots with his feet together. He would play full balls almost off the back foot. And Sooryavanshi can hit them like that too.

Even if his career ends up not reaching the expectations that other people have, which I think is very unlikely, he has still in the IPL done something that all of the greatest players up until now have never, ever done: none of them have managed to score at a strike-rate of 230, hit that many sixes, be that consistent in the entirety of the IPL. It is still one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen.

Today’s youngsters are exposed to T20 from the beginning, whereas when I was very young, it was Test matches. They grow up thinking about batting very much in a hyper aggressive mode. These younger guys can do things at their age that we wouldn’t have dreamt of at ours.

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Yes, even Sachin Tendulkar didn’t hit as many sixes, for all his genius. Sooryavanshi is a product of the T20 era of cricket.

Correct. So he will have to learn the game the other way around. He will have to learn how to bat time, to defend. In our generation, it was the opposite. We would have to spend a lot of time learning how to hit the ball.

How do you recall your masterpiece — 173 not out in 2001?

My main memory is about that summer, really. I wasn’t expecting to play Test cricket again. I got an opportunity and I played 42 Tests in a row. I had completely changed my game.

Your father helped, didn’t he?

That is right. The biggest thing I remember is the relationship I had with my dad in the winter of 2001. I called him and said, ‘Dad, I am hating playing cricket.’ Something that I had always loved. Now I was hating it. And I said to him — ‘Treat me as though I have never played the game before.’ So we went right back to the beginning. He really taught me how to hold the bat, how to stand, the whole thing. We changed my grip. We changed my stance. We changed my backlift. Everything. We went back to zero. Like I was five years old. And we worked like that for about three months. And then I luckily got back into the team. I had made a few runs playing for Surrey. A few injuries in the England camp before the Ashes started, and I got in.

How much does that knock, which came against Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie, mean to you?

Ah, it was huge. You wouldn’t be talking to me if it hadn’t been for that. And I wouldn’t be working in TV either. So that innings changed everything. It was the greatest day.

And how was the coach’s reaction?

I know my dad was in tears when [BBC] Test Match Special called him up.

The players you like to watch these days?

I actually love watching K.L. Rahul. I think he is a sensational player. Really classy. Harry Brook is fabulous to watch when he is in. Joe Root, too. And Travis Head — you can’t take your eyes off the screen when he is batting.

You have played against some of the greatest bowlers in history. Who were the most challenging among them?

Blimey! Curtly Ambrose. Him and Courtney Walsh. And then you had, obviously, Shane Warne. Glenn McGrath. Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan].

Among the Indians?

Harbhajan [Singh] and [Anil] Kumble, on those tracks.

And the batters you admired?

[Brian] Lara was sort of the king around about those times. Fellow left-hander, so I greatly admired him. Then the guys like [Ricky] Ponting, Sachin [Tendulkar], obviously. I remember applauding Ricky from second slip at the WACA, much to the annoyance of Nasser Hussain, who was standing next to me at slip. He glared at me. I was just standing there going, ‘Oh man, that’s good’. There were a lot of great players around, like the South Africans, Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith.

Is there cause for concern about the future of Test cricket?

Yeah, of course, there is. What you would like is to have eight to ten teams who are competing on a level playing field. If only England, Australia and India are playing each other, the game is starting to eat itself, you know.

Eventually, one of the great things about all of the series that go around is that you are anticipating and you are excited about the idea about playing this team at this venue. But if it is the same three teams the whole time, it is not that exciting.

What has happened in the modern era is that the gap between the countries that have plenty of finances and the rest has got wider. The competition has perhaps thinned out a little bit in recent times. And that is a huge shame, that finances have meant that a lot of countries, the West Indies, being the most obvious example simply because of their dominance [in the past], have suffered.

South Africa are kind of hanging in there. They are still producing a lot of players and they still manage just about to keep enough of their most talented players to play Tests. But in places like Sri Lanka and the West Indies, they find it very difficult to keep their best players who disappear off to earn more money playing T20. And that is a problem for the world game.

The First Class game and the structures that produce Test Match cricketers are strong in some places and not very strong at all in others.

Your thoughts on Bazball?

I have been critical of it at times. In the game of cricket, the Test match is the game. And they tried to do something that was going to take the game to a different place. But Test match cricket kind of fought against it a little bit. Because when it came down to it, in the big games against the likes of India and Australia, it didn’t work. And so, Test match cricket is kind of greater than any idea that people might have around how you play it.

And Test cricket is the greatest form of sport.

It is. The sport itself dictates to you what is necessary. And if you push too hard, the game will bite you back. And that is what happened. There is as much pleasure to be taken from a really hard-fought draw sometimes as there is from smashing it all over the park.

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The women got to play a Test at Lord’s, finally.

This has come about because the world has decided, well, you know, this is a great game of cricket, right? Why would we want to stop 50% of the world’s population from enjoying and playing the sport that we think is a great sport? And so that opportunity is now there and what you are seeing is a product of that.

Players in the women’s game that you enjoy watching?

I like Smriti Mandhana’s batting. She is just an incredibly graceful player. So easy on the eye. Very, very lovely to watch. She plays pace and spin equally well. She reminds me of David Gower, in fact. Harmanpreet Kaur is very good to watch, too. And Jemimah Rodrigues is a fine technician.

Besides cricket, music is your other passion. And you had the opportunity of performing with Sarah Brightman, one of the greatest voices of our time.

It was good fun, singing some of Sarah’s favourite songs on live television. It was kind of nerve-racking, but it was good.

Image for representation purpose only.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

New Zealand’s Jacob Duffy bowls on day 3 of the second Test against West Indies in Wellington on December 12, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

New Zealand’s Mitchell Hay plays a shot on day 2 of the second Test against West Indies in Wellington on December 11, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Pakistan’s Shan Masood and South Africa’s Aiden Markram pose for photograph with the Test trophy in Rawalpindi, on October 23, 2025
| Photo Credit: AP

Pakistan’s Shan Masood plays a shot during the first day of the second test cricket match against South Africa, at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, in Rawalpindi, on October 20, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

Is this proposal actually expected to benefit Test cricket?

Deep Dasgupta: I wrote for Sportstar in 2017 in favour of the proposal, so I am an advocate. The quality of the India-England Test series may not have been great, but because it was competitive, it had everyone’s attention. Test cricket will be watched by people as long as it is competitive. Obviously, we can’t expect people to watch it on all five days, for seven hours each day. But if it is competitive, people will follow it more often. With a two-tiered WTC, you will have a more competitive series and more people following Test matches again.

Jatin Paranjape: Today, more people consume the T20 (Twenty-20) format of cricket. But having said that, consumer behaviour has evolved rapidly: there is a niche group of people supporting Test cricket as well. They follow and appreciate the intricacies of Test cricket.

So, the time has come for the ICC (International Cricket Council) to launch Test cricket as a product. They need to be mindful of the fact that while all the media attention is around the T20 game, the ratings during the India-England Test series went through the roof. And that launch has to be a happy marriage of keeping the philosophical priority of Test cricket alive with the commercial angle.

I am not against the two-tier format, but it should not be skewed towards redistribution of commerce; it should be skewed towards redistribution of opportunity for all the teams, so that they have a reasonable stab at Test cricket. It should incentivise teams in the second tier to improve their game.

At the moment, the WTC involves only nine of the 12 Test-playing nations. Each team plays six series, primarily to avoid pitting India and Pakistan against each other. How can you re-jig the format or make the existing format more fan-friendly?

Deep Dasgupta: The major issue with a two-tier system with six teams in each tier is that a lot of the teams might say, ‘I am not going to play second tier’. It becomes a bit of an issue. So let’s say they are divided as seven (in top tier) and five (in the bottom) and we stick with the current format, which is six series in a cycle. If you have seven teams in Tier 1, automatically you play six other teams (in a cycle). Whether it’s India-Pakistan, I think that’s a different issue. That’s above my pay grade, so I’m not going to get into that bit. That can happen whenever it happens and whatever the powers are, they will decide.

Once Test cricket is sold as quality product — the India-England series was a great advocate for that — then you will also get revenue from it. And then you can create a Test fund. A major chunk of it would go into organising Test series for teams in the second tier. One of the major reasons why many Test-playing nations don’t play many Test matches is the commercial aspect. A series with five T20s is more commercially viable than one with three Test matches. If the ICC comes up with a Test fund, that could help.

Jatin Paranjape: Your calendar dictates what you can and cannot do. There is a finite number of days within which you need to drive this game forward. It’s funny that today, when you think about the calendar, you think about the IPL (Indian Premier League) first and then look at what is left after that. The ICC will have to identify what the two most important formats are, out of the three formats. ODI (One Day International) cricket needs to be looked at. The amount of inane ODI cricket being played today at a bilateral level is not good for the game or the broadcaster. I don’t think it represents any value for the consumer either. So if they look at how many days they have available as part of the calendar, then let them prioritise T20 cricket and Test cricket as the two main focus areas. The ICC has to have a tricky conversation with multiple stakeholders ahead of the 2027 cycle. The people at the top of the ICC are canny commercial operators. Jay Shah (ICC Chairman) will want to prioritise Test cricket and will have to find the right way to do it.

Perhaps with an eye on the next ICC broadcasting rights cycle (2027-2031), the ICC in July formed a working group headed by former New Zealand batter, Roger Twose, to look into all aspects of the next WTC. If Twose calls either of you, what would you suggest?

Deep Dasgupta: First, figure out a window for Test cricket. For that to happen, control the spread of franchise cricket. You see 29-year-old quality cricketers retiring from international cricket; these are all obviously interconnected issues. Look at windows where more and more Test cricket can be played. The two-tier system makes a lot of sense in such windows.

Jatin Paranjape: The ICC is the custodian of the game and custodians always have a long-term view on things. So nothing needs to be fixed in the next year or two. The path needs to be clear: over the next five-seven years, how are we going to have 12 really strong Test-playing nations? One way is to look at the tier two teams right now and create a league for them. Create a league whereby after a certain level, two or three teams out of those five or six are switched against tier one teams. That gives the spectators in these other countries something to look forward to.

Deep Dasgupta: That is a great idea. Five teams in tier two can play each other over a period of a month and a half or two months.

Can you suggest the ideal approach for the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India), the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board), and Cricket Australia — the three top boards that control the Test calendar and revenue — to make the two-tier Test system work?

Jatin Paranjape: There isn’t a more opportune time than this: the head of the ICC is the former head of the BCCI. A lot of changes can be made because there is the muscle to do it. When I say muscle, I mean it in a good way, in a way that where you want to promote the game, where you want to add commercial longevity to the game.

Let us not underestimate the power of the consumer. The consumer must feel enthused that Test cricket is well looked after; that there is the dopamine fix with the T20 format, but there is also a fantastic Test cricket calendar year on year, which is going to evolve into strengthening the tier two teams.

I also feel the ICC will miss an opportunity if they don’t form an advisory committee of some of the top players who have been big proponents of Test cricket or champions in Test cricket. No disrespect to Roger Twose, but players such as Sachin Tendulkar, Alastair Cook, and Ricky Ponting need to be part of the decision-making process.

Deep Dasgupta: I am glad that we are talking and everyone is talking about this. We have seen the time when nobody was really bothered about Test cricket. Once we accept the fact that there are challenges, and we need to do something, I am sure there will be solutions.

Jatin Paranjape: Let me talk about the consumer again. Let us not forget that the consumer is also often an aspiring cricketer. If teenagers don’t want to play red-ball cricket, they want to play white-ball cricket. You need to be able to touch them in some way, you need to be able to inspire them with the fact that Test cricket is being given priority that is similar to what is given to T20 cricket. If you fix cricket from an organisational perspective, but if your new players don’t want to play Test cricket, then you have a problem again. You need to launch Test cricket as a product. The objective could be that by 2036, we have we have 14 really strong Test nations.

Any parting thoughts?

Deep Dasgupta: For us, Test cricket is the most favoured format. Since everyone is talking about improving it, things will fall into place.

Jatin Paranjape: There needs to be a long-term view. The BCCI needs to shepherd this entire conversation. It does not need to be a dictator, but it needs to shepherd this entire conversation. Without a definitive point of view from the BCCI, we’ll be having the same chat two years down the road.

Listen to the conversation