Cricket will survive and remain our most noble game and I shall always remain proud of the part I played in its history and development.

                                       ~Don Bradman

It rewards valour, it rewards bravery, it rewards the weak, standing against the tough. 

To me, test cricket is the closest a sport can come to life itself. No other sport can come as close to life as a two-inning test match can. And I mentioned two innings specifically because the second inning is going a little out of fashion these days.

In life, we all get a second chance. There are very few unfortunate people who don't get a second chance. Gundappa Vishwanath made a duck on debut, he got a second chance and made 137. If he hadn't got a second chance, we would have missed one of our geniuses, who knows! This game is a great leveller and it shows people rough phases. Sachin was the master of the game and behaved like the servant of the game. But even he went through a lean patch and to the extent that he offered the greatest deal known to mankind that would his partner mind playing Hansie Cronje and he himself plays Allan Donald!

At the end of the test match, people shake hands, that is the best thing and I hope it never goes out of cricket. Sports should continue to be the greatest force in our life. Because everything that we held dear is becoming divisive. Sports is the only thing that's keeping us together.

There is only one problem with test match cricket and that is the world is getting faster. Can we watch it for 5 days? Can we watch for the little nuances that might come half an hour after lunch on the 3rd day? World has moved on and is watching the highlights. The only problem with highlights is that matches are won by what doesn't happen in the highlights. The highlights show the glamorous shots and the big things but matches are won by people doing small things more often. 

What about the sandwich format then? The one-day international will never die. The good thing about 50-over cricket which is also why Dhoni is the master of the 50-over game is that 300 is a lot of balls. It gives you time to play by yourself. It allows you to accelerate in the end. Dhoni can be 20 off 55 balls and he can finish with 90 of 90 balls. But if he wasn't at 20 of 55, he may not get to 90 of 90 balls. So it's a game that allows you to play the way you want and still surprises us.

What about T20 then? How did T20 start? It tells you what common sense can achieve. This great nerd market researcher, whom the world looks down upon, showed that people like the action of the first 10 overs of the power play and the finish at the end overs. When it first came, almost everything that we thought about T20 was proven wrong. We thought that T20 cricket would be a slog fest. We thought spinners would vanish. One of the problems that Cricket had and football didn't was, at the end of 90 minutes, we went back with the results. And they said you play 5 days and still come back without a result. Even in one day cricket, you play for 7 hours and sometimes over 8 hours because bowlers read a book, contemplate life and delve into Plato's philosophy before bowling the next ball. In T20 there's something that happens on every ball. Every ball is an event. In the olden times, the bowlers used to come up with length deliveries. And length ball was a batsman's dying wish. All our life we are told to take our left leg to the pitch of the ball and smuggle the ball. But if you take your left leg closer to the pitch of the ball, then where is the space for the bat swing!

The perception of risk has changed. Shots that are unconventional in one format of the game are very common in other formats of the game. And because the batsman started playing these shots, the bowler had to start thinking. The bowlers are the greatest survivors of our game. You toss up a nuclear bomb on the game and the bowler will survive. Then the bowler came up with a loopy slower bouncer to interrupt the bat swing. Then they perfected the ball that was a guarantee to not give you the wicket. That's the wide yorker on the edge of the tramline. Then AB de Villiers arrived, and he said why should I take my left leg away and expose this when I can move my whole body away and use my left side to hit it over the third man. We know that the scoop behind the wicket keeper's head has gone out of our game. Tillakaratne Dilshan played it beautifully. Now the batsman is changing his grip and hitting it away. The wrist spinner was the person who was supposed to die in T20 cricket. They came in because anything that moves away from the batsman becomes difficult to play. The batsman can hit a straight ball with these big weapons of mass destruction, called cricket bats. That was what George Bush was searching for in Iraq! They can hit the straight balls through the line like Chris Gayle. The balls that are still being searched for in Cubbon Park in Bangalore.

Where do the wrist spinners come from? What a democracy T20 is! Do they come from Australia? Occasionally. Do they come from India? The old traditional home of spin bowling. Do they come from Pakistan that has a history of wrist spinners? No, they came from Afghanistan. Can you imagine Afghanistan playing cricket? If test cricket was the only form of cricket possible, we wouldn't have seen Rashid Khan. If we remember the World T20 qualifiers in 2019, there were two pools. Do you know who won the first half? Papua New Guinea. T20 has democratized cricket. It opened an opportunity for everyone.

There is something else that I love about the T20 format and that is the quality of fielding. If you miss a ball, that's three runs. Many matches get decided because of three runs. We have seen catches being taken on and across the boundary line. Taking the ball, throwing it up, going out, coming back in. This is sheer magnificence. People are now studying matchups. This bowler versus this batsman. They say the best way to keep Dhoni quiet is to bowl left-arm spin outside the leg stump into his pads. We see more sixes being hit in test match cricket. Somebody forgot to tell Rohit Sharma that he is playing a test match the other day. When did we all see someone hitting a small six, they're all hitting colossal sixes. 

Countries are struggling. India is playing good cricket. England is blow hot and blow cold. For the first time in history, England can't find three players. It is after Sir Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss, all those years ago, that an English opener started and ended the year, still in the English side. New Zealand is the most admirable country playing world cricket at the moment. What gentlemen come from that small place. Kane Williamson, Ross Taylor, Tom Latham, Daniel Vettori, Neil Wagner, and BJ Watling. Quiet, simple and unassuming guys. Test cricket is in a lot of trouble. So we need to protect test cricket as much as possible and hopefully, T20 will protect test match cricket itself. Let us stop looking down on T20. T20 is keeping test cricket alive by bringing people into our game. 

For the previous generation, you completed your cricket education by going to the West and playing in the leagues and county. Today you complete your education by coming to the East. You complete your education by coming and playing in the IPL. Because IPL is the world's finest cricket festival. It's an amalgamation of ideas and thoughts. AB de Villiers is sitting with Virat Kohli and that small kid is watching them discuss cricket and learning from them. There are players from overseas who don't mind not getting a game but they want to hear how other people are and what they do. Ben Stokes came to the IPL just because Jos Butler returned a different player. What changed Jos Butler was, he said, he watched Dhoni and learnt how he is so cool under tense situations. People are learning from each other. It is becoming a giant mehfil where everybody's got their stall. IPL has created very diverging realities. Never have so many people got an opportunity to play test cricket. Some of the greatest cricketers of previous generations went unheard because they never got an opportunity. Cricket is raising people from rags to riches.

There is one other very beautiful thing that's happening in our cricket. And that is, it's fantastic that so many girls are playing cricket. There were a lot of arrogant men who said, "Girls play cricket!". No, we don't have any right to decide who plays our game. Has anyone seen Smriti Mandhana bat? Smriti Mandhana driving through the covers; you’d want to put it in a loop. Just look at Jemimah Rodrigues and Harmanpreet Kaur bat! Push the boundary ropes back because they are hitting the balls into the stands. And there is this kid nobody knew. She started batting and is opening the batting for India. She is 16, Shefali Verma. I think the future is for girls to play cricket. Saina is the pioneer, Sindhu has taken it to another level; Saina, Sindhu, Sania, Mithali, all these Hyderabadi girls. Mithali is a rockstar!

So, lastly I want to say. I would love everyone to watch this sport as the world is getting divisive. The ball that leaves the hand is secular. It doesn't have any caste or religion. It's just the skill with which it leaves the hand and the skill with which it is countered. 

And that's why sports is still pure and we’ll keep hearing these stories from time to time.

– Priyanshu Kumar