Test Cricket: A tribute to the most gruelling format of the game

Test Cricket, in its very essence, is a sport distinct from others. It is a test of character, skill, resilience and endurance amongst other things. It is the truest test of the cricketing ability of a player as the deficiency of player cannot be masked by mere fortune or other transient phenomena.

It leaves you out in the open, to battle whatever is thrown at you. Literally. It is a five-day drama (sometimes much shorter), shaped by various elements. Every ball is a battle. It tests your cricketing nous like no other format does. Can you outfox a big Aussie pacer hurling bouncers at you whizzing past your neck leaving you hanging for dear life at the WACA in Perth?

Can you grind your way out of the yarn a spinner weaves you into on an Indian dustbowl? Can you stand in the field for 6 hours a day sent on a leather chase all across the field by the best batsmen in the world and still have the bottle to enter the arena the next day and keep fighting in the face of adversity?

It is an eon of gritty combat. In this format, only the deserving team wins. You might possess the firepower. Do you have the stomach to sustain it? There are sports that require more strength, more pace, higher levels of fitness, deeper pockets of endurance but no sport bests cricket in its all-round development of all these characteristics.

The game swings from side to side over the course of 5 days. Every session tells a different tale. It is not all flash bang like what the shorter formats of the game have been offering us. It involves shifts of momentum. Swings of fate. It is a fight not just against the opponent but against the conditions, against nature at times.

Bad light, heat, wind – all coupled with your opponent lashing out at you, firing on all cylinders. It is a test of the individual as a man and of the team as an army. Each quantum is fundamental when it comes to skill. In this game, with the flux of time, conditions change, tactics change. The weather and the pitch can both get diabolically unpredictable.

The game swings from side to side over the course of 5 days

A number of factors come together to form multitudinous possibilities. There does not have to be a black, there does not have to be a white. There can be a grey result. And all of these can be considered victorious in their own ways on different occasions. No other sport can offer such a wide gamut of results.

A saga after saga of relentless duels, a test match series is two months of no reprieve. Every man gets multiple chances to prove he is worth something. A series of five-day matches tests a player’s mettle like nothing else. One match, the ball spins, another, it swings.

The Gabba, The Adelaide Oval, The WACA, The MCG and the SCG in Australia. Old Trafford, The Oval, Trent Bridge and Lord’s Cricket Ground in England. The Kotla, Wankhede, Eden Gardens and Chinnaswamy in India - to play in unforgiving environments at these daunting grounds day in day out is a feat unparalleled.

Some bottle it, some fight and come out champions. These test series have given birth to legends. Players’ performances in such matches have made them larger than life heroes. They are the evidence that not everything glorious is glitzy.

Every test match can be a lesson in itself. It is not quick, it is not certain. It is a voyage that challenges your stamina, your spine and most of all your disposition, in an environment that is volatile. It separates boys from men. It is poetry in motion. Other sports are pulp fiction. Test cricket is an epos.