So another doomsday deadline has come and gone.

A series of 50-over games have been played before full houses, people have been pestering others for tickets, queues have routinely appeared and balls have been cut off from telecasts. Cricket must be in good health.

But it wasn’t meant to be. In the afterglow of the Twenty20 World Cup, the word of mouth circuit was freely distributing obits of the 50-over game; the only people I heard were those saying they only watched the first ten and the last ten overs because the rest didn’t count anyway.

50 overs cricket was being put in the same bus as orkut and ghastly rap music and singers in caps. Not for the first time have we underestimated the resilience of sport.

Test cricket dies every season and re-appears in fairly robust health the next. The stands may not be full but people know the scores, great performances are lauded, victories are celebrated and statistics greedily devoured.

Test cricket is now the connoisseurs’ product, having received a shot in the arm with the arrival of 50-over cricket and some bold Australian thinking.

To my mind, the reason Test cricket will never die is because it gives people the opportunity of fighting back.

A mistake is not the end of the world, players stand firm against the tide and sometimes turn it back with old-fashioned grit.

... contd.