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Longer or shorter version, the show goes on

S. Ram Mahesh

In the new environment, will wearing a national cap remain paramount?

— AFP

READY FOR THE SHOWDOWN: Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara (right) stretches with teammate Muttiah Muralitharan (background) during a practice session at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo on Monday.

Colombo: World cricket is in the midst of a seismic shift, with the fault lines splintering the game’s landscape.

The colossal success of Twenty20, specifically the Indian Premier League (IPL), has convinced some that the days of Test cricket’s pre-eminence are numbered; severely threatened is one-day cricket, whose jaded, distended format appears exposed by something tighter, more urgent, and — for the time being at least — more novel.

This state of flux backdrops India’s tour of Sri Lanka, a six-week enterprise that will accommodate three Tests and five ODIs.

As India’s first bi-lateral series after the IPL, the tour carries substantial import. While it will be too soon, come September, to read the tea leaves foretelling the game’s future, the tour will have helped drain the cup.

So, what will the tour signify? An act of considerable significance has already occurred: M.S. Dhoni’s decision to miss the Test leg confirmed one theory and fashioned another. Clearly, there is too much cricket. Player burnout, particularly if the player happens to shoulder the kind of burden Dhoni, one-day skipper and wicketkeeper-batsman, does — is inevitable.

But will cricketers start privileging shorter forms of the game over Test cricket? The option that offers the best financial return on time invested is undeniably attractive, even accounting for the fulfilment of playing the game’s richest, most challenging form; with the IPL reshaping cricket’s structure — and spawning clones in the process — will the pride associated with wearing the national cap remain an ideal worth striving for?

“Test cricket is here to stay, and players really feel privileged to be part of it,” said Anil Kumble, the Indian captain, after arriving in the sticky Sri Lankan capital city last week.

That Kumble felt compelled to express his fealty to Test cricket — even if it was prompted by a question — shows he is acutely aware of the zeitgeist.

Kumble also made the point that he remembers most of his accomplishments in the game’s classical form — the implication being that the other avatars are less easily recalled. This is a pertinent point.

International cricket has turned into a blur of perpetual motion, with the switch across formats being nearly seamless to a follower.

Few — save the diehards, remember with clarity the events of the preceding season (if there is such a thing as a cricket season these days). Indeed, Kumble was asked by a professional journalist, no less, if he was happy with the return of the senior batsmen to the team!

At its worst, the surfeit of cricket will lead to viewer fatigue – an online poll suggested that it is already the case. Yet, far more insidious is its effect on how the game is followed. Context is crucial to Test cricket. In the days of five-Test series (now a luxury accorded, it would appear, only to the Ashes), it matured over the course of the tour. Rivalries were established, characters revealed, emotions invested. The play of nuance was afforded space.

New scenario

As tours shortened, the context drew deeply from the back story between the sides. But as more and more limited-over cricket began punctuating the periods between Test series, the back stories grew sketchier.

Fortunately, the coming Test series has several subplots, pregnant with possibility: the unveiling of Ajantha Mendis, and captain Mahela Jayawardene’s handling of him; the cerebral battle between Kumar Sangakkara and Kumble; the quest of Sachin Tendulkar to become Test cricket’s highest run-scorer; the contest between Muttiah Muralitharan and the Indian batsmen. Moreover, the context is easily established (it isn’t the appropriate time, however, to establish that of the one-day leg).

India has won just one series — and two Tests, in four tours of the beautiful, strife-torn island. For a side that has transformed as a touring unit in the recent past, building a magnificent away record, this is a statistic that begs remedying.

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