The Test final we hardly deserve

India's Virat Kohli leads the No.2 ranked Test team into the Test Championship final against New Zealand at Lord’s. Picture: AFP

A stopped watch, goes the saying, is right twice a day. Something similar applies to the World Test Championship final, which commences on Friday night at Southampton’s Ageas Bowl.

The competition is a farce. It’s a quarter of a century since Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack began advocating for such an initiative. Yet the International Cricket Council could do no better than graft an ersatz point system onto a pre-existing Future Tours Program, leaving the busiest team (England) playing almost thrice the number of games as the least busy (Bangladesh).

The 120 points available in each series were generally halved between two Tests, but in the Ashes had to be split as many as five ways — an absurd discount for the most venerable rivalry of all.

Confusingly there remain Tests, like New Zealand’s recent outings in England, worth nothing, as they are not even part of the Championship. All this and Covid too, to push a bunch of games into an imponderable future.

Series, meanwhile, are the essence of Test cricket. They mitigate influences like the toss, the weather, luck, injury, accident. They accentuate depth, resilience, skill in different conditions. Nothing in Test cricket’s history has been decided to anyone’s satisfaction in a series of one: single games like the Centenary Tests of 1977 and 1980 were specifically not for the Ashes; the Super Test of 2005 was never repeated.

Yet here we are, settling numero uno in international cricket’s original format over the distance of five days — after which England can get back to the much more important business of keeping the world safe for short-form cricket in which the players not only resemble crisp packets but are meant to.

Anyway, end of rant. After all that, the stopped hands on the Test Championship clockface conform to the correct time: the match will feature the two best Test teams in the world, India and New Zealand, and in the best way possible, after their having played cricket that satisfyingly reflects their cultures and capabilities.

It’s for this reason that Test matches are international cricket’s most fulfilling format: your Test team puts into the field the essence of your country’s game.

In Australia’s case it reflects a national sense of entitlement and a directionless high-performance system, in England’s a first-class competition diluted and marginalised over decades.

Virat Kohli’s team, by contrast, reflects India’s staggering depth and wealth. The 15-member squad it named last week could find no place for its match winner against Australia in Brisbane, Shardul Thakur, or its match winner against England at home, Axar Patel.

A week ago, too, India named an ODI squad to play Sri Lanka next month. It’s led by Shikhar Dhawan, Bhuveneshwar Kumar, and the Pandya brothers; it includes stars of the latest, truncated Indian Premier League like Prithvi Shaw, Devdutt Padikkal, Suryakumar Yadav, Manish Pandey, Ishan Kishan and Sanju Samson.

In other words, India at the moment possesses about 50 match-ready male players of international quality. Not even the West Indian and Australian dynasties of the last 30 years could match that.

They come up against a team led by Kane Williamson that exemplifies, perhaps better than ever, the qualities traditionally associated with the cricket of New Zealand: the maximisation of scarce resources, the off-field unity, the on-field tenacity.

It is the same combination that, frankly, would have carried off cricket’s one-day crown two years ago but for another ICC brainstorm.

New Zealand’s 15-member squad might not exude India’s star quality, but will be whittled down for the match by excluding good cricketers.

Another good index of a team’s cohesion is how players fare on debut — whether they feel sure and secure enough to play to their full potential.

It was exhibited to good effect at Lord’s a couple of weeks ago when Devon Conway auditioned for Tom Latham’s opening partner by making a double century in his maiden Test. Not since another seasoned player of South African birth, Kevin Pietersen, has a Test cricketer looked so instantly ready for the top level.

Man for man, there is much to savour. Both captains average in the vicinity of 60 in the last five years. Both attacks are fit, fresh and long on bowlers in the top 20 of the ICC rankings.

Both teams owe a great deal to their home records, so the neutral venue seems fair. Conditions overhead may suit New Zealand, a dry surface under foot please India. Where the game is not being carried live by a broadcast partner, it is being streamed on the ICC’s website. Perhaps no Test match will have been watched in so many countries.

For Australia, it’s an opportunity for some self-reflection. It’s easy to blame the over rate penalty levied in the Melbourne Test for our absence from the final. But by our reluctance to tour Bangladesh and South Africa in the last year we deserve our also-ran status.

The decisions of seven Australian players to stand aside from the forthcoming white-ball tour of the Caribbean is a poor look — self-interested and self-involved. Yet CA is hardly in a position to criticise given its own hermit kingdom mentality, demanding the world’s tribute while offering nothing in return.

Anyway, settle in with a hope for five good days, and a game worthy of the format if not the competition. That the World Test Championship has a final it hardly deserves is no reason not to enjoy it.