After being on a 44-day diet of T20 ‘happy meals’ and the subsequent morsels of hastily cooked one-day mini-meals, the craving for the longer version has intensified. With the Test series starting in a week’s time — July 23 — things look promising glancing at the ingredients in the kitchen and the master chefs at hand. The cooking range is set at low flame as a mouth-watering three-course spread is planned for the next month.

Mouthwatering contest

It’s been a long wait for the ‘old school’ to savour this incredible indulgence. Injuries to aging bodies and scissor-hand selectors with flippant youth policies were the two factors that ensured that this ‘Perfect 10’ didn’t quite happen when India met Sri Lanka in the recent times.

During Lanka’s 2005-06 trip to India, Jayasuriya, Vaas and Ganguly were missing from action. Earlier, in 2001, when India toured Lanka, missing on the flight to Colombo were Tendulkar and Kumble.

While the rest of the world has lost patience with its elders, India and Lanka, reluctantly at times, have persisted with their seniors. Cynics might want to dub this as a battle between two Dads’ armies, or even a senior citizens convention, but that would just mean they didn’t get an invitation to Jayasuriya’s 39th birthday bash the other day in Karachi, where he compiled a 88-ball 130.

Even if one does a real needle-in-the-haystack kind of search, it will be tough to find a series where record-breakers will so frequently brush shoulders, where every other bat versus ball contest is a high-profile face-off with several layers of intrigue. The 55,035 vs 1686 is a kind of contest that has never happened before and the chances of it happening in the near future aren’t very bright either.

... contd.