WHAT a marathon of a week it's been. Two enthralling Test matches, one Down Under in Sydney, starting after midnight, the other in Cape Town, starting mid-morning. Only about six hours in the day without top-notch cricket live on the telly, the kind of stuff it's difficult to tear yourself away from. If it weren't for the suspender-snapping diversions provided by the Ukrainian ladies in the Thunder Bar, cricket exhaustion would be not far off.
And what a week for cricket in its purest form. The sheer majesty of England's effort in Australia; the cliffhanging uncertainty almost throughout of our match against India at Newlands. The tons of Alastair Cook and Ian Bell. The ton in each innings of Jacques Kallis, the second an epic of pluck and grit as he struggled with injury – not to forget the Houdini act that went with it as he and Mark Boucher rescued us from disaster. The consummate off-spin of Harbajan Singh. This game had class stamped all over it.
And down in Sydney we had the awesome spectacle of the seesaw tipping with great finality against the Aussies, who still have class but not quite what they had before. (And, of course, a few of our local lads closely involved in the tipping).
These were the world's top four Test sides, as ranked by the International Cricket Board, and they did the game a service. Does anyone out there still argue that Test cricket is on its way out; that it has to yield to the one-day game or – shudder! – the Twenty20 travesty? Test cricket has shown itself to be the real thing, every ball a mini-drama, every session a major drama and the match as a whole something Tolstoyan in its complexity and subtlety.
Yet there still are those who will not let well enough alone. If Test cricket has proved itself admirably suited to the contemporary world, they still want to modify it. People close to the ICB are talking seriously about day/night Test cricket.
That surely is an absurdity. The quality of the light is a vital factor in Test cricket. When it falters, play is suspended. Yet people seem to be suggesting that one could move, in a Test, from daylight to artificial light and lose nothing.
Also, Test cricket has to be played with a red ball. Don't ask me to explain the aerodynamics of swing, seam and drift – even the fundis disagree – but one thing is certain. It doesn't happen the same way with a white ball. What kind of Test cricket would this be?
The Test series against India is over. On Sunday night many of the same players will gather at Moses Mabhida stadium for a Twenty20 match – music, dancing girls, fireworks, razzamatazz – to be followed by a Bollywood concert. Let's not be killjoys. Let folk enjoy themselves. But let's draw a line of seriousness between Test cricket and this other stuff.
Some of us like Bollywood. Some of us like the Thunder Bar. Call me a purist and I'll look it up in my Ukrainian phrasebook.
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