Every generation asks the question: Will Test cricket survive? The game has been an anachronism in every age, and that is its beauty. When motor cars or passenger trains or aircraft arrived in the 19th and 20th centuries, there was talk of the increased pace of life and how the long-format game was doomed. The elegiac air has been ever present.
The West Indies and Pakistan, both of whom have also won both white ball titles, have similar issues, starting from poor administration to lack of public interest in a team that doesn’t win often enough. When society itself is changing at a rapid pace, why would cricket, which reflects it, not change? The question then is not if the five-day game should be sustained but whether it can be, given in particular television’s allergy to the so-called ‘lesser’ matches. The establishment of the World Test Championship has given the format some relevance and the teams something to aspire for. South Africa, the official World Test champions haven’t played a Test since November last, and a white ball champion Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is the most exciting name in the sport, filling stadiums even for first class matches. You don’t need to be a reader of entrails or tea leaves to see the future of the game. It’s already here. Or maybe not. In Pakistan’s case players didn’t emerge so much from their system as through some form of spontaneous evolution.
But it is a club within a club, with only nine of the 12 teams in the fray, and a system susceptible to manipulation.
A Javed Miandad sees a teenage left arm bowler in the nets and picks him for the national team to set Wasim Akram on track. An Imran Khan picks a youngster against the wishes of the selectors and he, Inzamam-ul Haq, becomes an international star.
Inconsistency has been the hallmark of Pakistan’s cricket. They have been a team as capable of thrashing the best as losing to the worst.
Yet, when former skipper Azhar Ali, a 97-Test veteran, says in an interview, “We don’t even do inconsistency any more,” the humour cannot hide the pathos. “We’ve become totally consistent,” he says, “in the most negative way.”