Once again two rivals, with a history of bad blood between them, have shown us up to be a community of hypochondriacs. We fret over Test cricket, we dissect it, we search for the smallest sign of weakness to pronounce illness and once again we have been shown up.

Test cricket is robust and, as we were taught to say by high school teachers, in the pink of health. We don’t need to protect it, merely educate another generation. We worry too much.

Yes, there are trends as owners of television channels will tell you. Yes, more people are watching T20 but bell bottoms came and went and came again. Test cricket will never compete against T20 as fine dining cannot against the hamburger. But children are still learning classical music. In less than a month we have had three stirring games, heartwarming displays of character, skill and bravery. They talk about the golden age of cricket. If it was better than this month all I’ll say is they had better cricket writers!

For an hour and a half at the Sydney Cricket Ground, on a pitch where one ball kept low and the other leapt at you, numbers ten and eleven for South Africa kept Australia’s bowlers at bay. On skill and ability alone they had no business to be there that long. But those are tiny adjectives when placed alongside mightier ones like determination and tenacity. Dale Steyn and Makhaya Ntini would have been pardoned for being out twice each in that much time. But the opponent had to be denied even if victory was impossible. And Steyn and Ntini denied Australia for an hour and a half. In doing so they showed that every player must have a second skill, however tiny, and be prepared to use it as armour.

... contd.