Test cricket in need of global solution

Christopher Martin-Jenkins, in the Times, says it is good that England are in India because it shows that normal life can proceed even after the horrors in Mumbai. On a more mundane cricketing level, it is good also because India’s recent Test success must be helping to put the Twenty20 bubble into perspective.

All this ought to get everyone talking about Test cricket, which is what anyone who understands the game wants. That is not to denigrate the new spectators who have been attracted to the more superficial excitements of the aggressively marketed Twenty20 version.

But exciting, competitive Test cricket ought to teach them that the two-innings game is subtler, tougher, more profound, interesting and satisfying. The trouble is that Test cricket, or rather the administrators who have let it drift on too aimlessly in too much profusuion for too long, have pushed their luck too far.

Mike Atherton, who replaced Martin-Jenkins as cricket correspondent of Times last year, says in his column that a shabby bit of paper, A4 size, with ragged edges as if it had been torn from a notebook in haste, relayed England’s message of unity and commitment.

The last handwritten note of importance by a member of the England cricket team was from Mike Gatting in Faisalabad in 1987 when he was forced to apologise in writing to Shakoor Rana, the umpire, after their infamous altercation. Unlike on that occasion, however, when Gatting misspelt Faisalabad, the spelling and syntax were perfect.

Duncan Fletcher believes England have made the right decision to return to India, but it should never have been as big an issue as it became. If you don't visit India now, you may as well never visit, says Fletcher in his Guardian column.

In the same newspaper, Rob Bagchi takes pride in the land of his father. For those once politely known as an Anglo-Indian, the India v England Test in Chennai is a resonant one, he says.

At Headingley I got my chance to see India in the flesh and my first impressions were far from favourable. Only a year before Iqbal Qasim had been skelped by a Bob Willis bouncer and looking at these apparently frail men — short in stature, some bespectacled and the majority irredeemably square when compared to England's young cavaliers, Ian Botham and David Gower — I feared for their safety.

While his father would "bang on"about Rabindranath Tagore or Satyajit Ray, a young Bagchi would impatiently try to steer the conversation back to Vinoo Mankad and Vijay Merchant.

With many hoping Monty Panesar plays a key role for England in the spin-friendly conditions of Chennai and Mohali this series, how can he go about realising his undoubted potential? Sam Lyon in BBC Sport believes it may appear churlish to pick holes in Panesar's game so early into his career.

While much of the focus has, inevitably, been on the England team's decision to return to India despite the recent Mumbai attacks, the attention must now switch to the real reason for them being here. Jonathan Agnew in his column on BBC Sport believes it is easier for England to come and play these games because, ultimately, they have no real bearing on anything. Perhaps, because this series needs to be played - just as cricket has to continue in Pakistan, too.

If the BCCI has learned anything from this tragic affair, it should be that it needs all of its friends and allies all of the time and, occasionally, that it must listen to them.

In England's case, that means the entirely reasonable request made before every tour for the major matches to be staged in large centres so the many thousands of England supporters can come to watch.

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