We have so much to lose if Test cricket goes the way of the dodo

Should the unthinkable happen, and future generations spurn Test cricket, what do they lose?

Much of the game’s equivalent of flora and fauna, I dare say.

Indeed, if the world wildlife fund had its’ eye on cricket’s welfare, it would catalog a distressing number of endangered species.

The list would probably come out like this.

1. Textbook batting.
Status: vulnerable

Should T20 be cricket’s only environment, textbook batting will lose much of its habitat. In the five-day game, it flourishes in a range the size of the Amazon, but in a post-test dystopia, most rain-forests will be cleared for palm oil plantations.

Cricket’s wonderful biodiversity of sumptuous drives and balanced strokes will be consigned to small pockets, only having currency when teams lose early wickets and must knuckle down to settle for something competitive.

So if text book batting is cricket’s great apes, its days of dominating the canopy will be over. It will now be just one of the less common occupants.

But it could be worse: it could have been consigned to a bit part like Clive in ‘Every which way but loose.’

2. Short-pitched bowling.
Status: critically endangered

Cricket’s big cats, sustained spells of short-pitched bowling, will be left toothless in this age. Never again will we see cricket’s equivalent of a lion pack predating its quarry. Lillee and Thommo, the Windies pace quartets of the eighties and Alan Donald working over the Waughs… all that bumper-centric menace will be no-balled out of existence.

Sustained hostility with the short ball will have no place in an environment where the parameters are tightened on legitimate deliveries. All that will be left is the occasional searing spell, like Andre Russell’s truncated cameos in last years Big Bash

In the post-test dystopia, Cricket’s big cats will feel less they are predating, and more they are scavenging. They will mostly feed on miscued slogs to cow corner. And big cats are far from their majestic best stumbling upon carrion; they are at their most majestic making batsmen cower.

3. Maidens.
Status: near threatened

The maiden, a drab weed which flowers on occasion, faces an uncertain future. The dot ball will encroach into most of its native territory and it will become as rare as some orchids.

On the upside though, the few species which do survive will flower spectacularly, speckled by wondrous slower balls and back of the hand oddities.

4. Shouldering arms.
Status: critically endangered.

The leave outside off stump also faces an uncertain future. The little we see of it will be muted by an urgency to score.

In Test cricket, shouldering arms is a decisive maneuver – one engaged by circumspect batsmen shrewdly playing the percentages. In T20, however, it appears a missed opportunity to score – one engaged by the fatalistic, the defeated or the inept.

Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine that it will coached out of batting’s repertoire once T20 becomes more scientific.

The leave, if it survives, will never again look balletic. It will look ungainly. It will have the look of a flightless bird fleeing an introduced carnivore which can outrace it in little more than a trot.

5. Silly short leg.
Status: facing extinction

Bat-pad catchers are almost certainly facing extinction. Sadly, never again will we see their acrobatics. They are the game’s bats, catching ricocheting kookaburras using a combination of peripheral vision and sonar like nous. In the age where balls are mostly skied to cow corner, they will give way to deep mid wicket and deep mid on.

6. Third, fourth and fifth slip.
Status: facing extinction

Third, fourth and fifth slip – the exciting siren of a bowling team on the attack – are surely casualties of this paradigm shift.

Third, fourth and fifth slip don’t save boundaries in the deep; they are extravagances when runs don’t count and wickets are everything.

But that all changes in this construct.

Like the species of brown bears that catch spawning salmon in white water rapids, they are looking at a world where the river runs dry. A grim future awaits.

7. The battle between bat and ball.
Status: unbalanced.

The respectful dialogue between bat and ball struggles to stay civilized when scoring strains for 10 an over. Making runs at this rate requires a screaming argument.

In Test cricket, the good length ball in the corridor is met by batsmen respectfully. It’s as though their forward defense says, ‘Nah nah, good point. I can’t argue with that. Scoring against that would be risky.’

In T20, however, batsman aim to be dismissive and contemptuous of every ball; including yorkers. Their agricultural slogs scream, ‘I don’t do respect, I do sixes!’

The battle between bat and ball will have its place, though. When early wickets fall, it will couple with text book batting as the batsmen knuckle down for a competitive score. Indeed, this might even resemble old school cricket.

So, the battle between bat and ball? Is it cricket’s balance between predators and grazers? Or perhaps it’s the entire ecosystem? Either way, if you get the balance wrong, the whole thing collapses. Just as it did on Easter island.

8. Long winded anecdotes by the likes of Skull in slow periods of play.
Status: critically endangered.

Skull, and Blowers in old blightly, are at their comedic best when cricket is meandering. How will they fare when the game is no longer calibrated to meander? Hmm, it’s possible that one sided matches in the future will fill the breach? Should the match be a blowout, you can see Skull using that as a window for his mischief. But you can’t help but feel it wouldn’t be the same. The listener would be tuning out in this template, whereas in slow passages, he or she is still engaged. Worrisomely for cricket’s characters, all this points to not being able to roam as freely as they once did.

9. Bowling into footmarks; cricket in creams; declarations; follow ons; reverse swing; double and triple hundreds; heroic tailenders batting out entire sessions to force draws.

This group are facing a mass extinction event. They will all be vaporized as though the cricketsphere has been struck by a meteor. You can only hope their bones fossilize as well as the dinosaurs.

Finally, what of the Ashes and the context with 150 years of records? Well, we still can have a T20 Ashes, I guess? And context has to roll with the punches like everything else on this planet; so, context schmontext. But a T20 Ashes? Hmm, that’d be like replacing whales with guppies. And there’s just no way guppies cut it as sushi for the likes of Japanese scientific research.