Media, players, historians, traditionalists and none -but-all have many reasons to disregard the wondrous nature of T20 cricket and back tests altogether. Being a cricket fanatic, freak and a big follower, I do not deny the fact that Test cricket is the-most ultimate examination of a cricketer, but on the same end, I cannot blame the fantastic T20 cricket for that. Really, it feels that T20 cricket is just an obnoxious part of cricket fraternity or family that comprises of Tests, One-dayers and of course now T20, when cricket legends and experts go against it.

Nevertheless, I am not here for advertising the T20 cricket, but, I’m here to make people understand that, neither Tests are dying, nor T20 is disintegrating the primacy of the same.

The introduction of the very famous Indian Premier League (IPL) and its grande-success lead to all this fuss. This is the only time that test cricket backers, traditionalists and legends felt that IPL could kill test cricket! Yes, T20 and hence the IPL can obviously break the shackles and decrease the popularity of test matches which indeed was already low, but, it can’t take away the royalty of the same. Simply, more players than any, today, will regard as Test-matches, the ultimate aim. There will be few exceptions, as always, but not in majority. The point thus comes that if the players are keeping tests as their ultimate goal, what is the requirement of this fret? Furthermore, when the ODIs were introduced, why no one questioned the integrity of same then?

And moreover, even Tests since incepted, went under a lot of changes. For example, test cricket was introduced with each over of 4 balls, then 8 balls per over and then we had 6 balls per over. And a very weird rule when tests were introduced was – Six. Initially, if and only if the ball cleared the ground, it was deemed as six else a four only! These changes were done with the integral parts of cricket then because change was inevitable and still now Change is inevitable, henceforth, introduction of T20 cricket is nothing but a change, though an early one for the traditionalists as they had, as I think, not a lot of one-dayers!

Whatever it may be, my final argument is that, even after five years of T20 cricket, I really don’t think, tests are getting a run for their money! The following statistical analysis will prove my point invariably:

1. Considering overall stats, there have been 1949 tests, 2943 one-dayers and 127 T20Is. In this regard, the ratio for these formats comes out to be 1: 1.51: 0.07 respectively.

2. Considering the stats since one-dayers were incepted i.e. since 05 January 1971, 1274 tests, 2934 one-dayers and 127 T20Is have been played. The ratio here is 1: 2.31: 0.09 respectively.

3. Now considering the facts after T20Is were introduced i.e. since 17 February 2005, 213 tests, 717 one-dayers and 127 T20Is have been played. The ratio being 1: 3.37: 0.59 respectively.

4. And now finally considering the stats since IPL was introduced i.e. since 18 April 2008, 76 tests, 241 one-dayers and 73 T20Is have been played. The ratio here is 1: 3.17: 0.97 respectively.

According to argument 2 above, the ratio states 2.31 one-dayers per test match since one-day matches were incepted. Now, considering the ratio in arugument 3, i.e after the T20Is, it increases to 3.37 One-dayers per test match and 0.59 T20Is per test. And finally according to ratio in the argument 4, there have been approx. 1 T20I and 3 one-dayers per 1 Test match.

Henceforth, my arguments are clearly indicating that T20 is no ‘culprit’ as the number of tests and one-dayers is absolute constant. Marginal change is inevitable, if you are willing to introduce another format in the game.

Thus I feel that there are neither T20s nor one-dayers hitting Tests hard and if we keep on having matches like the England-South Africa draws this South African summer of the Australian turn-tables against Pakistan during the Australian summer, test are going to only be better in the coming years.