Many of you have been an­tic­i­pat­ing my thoughts on the lat­est chap­ter in the West In­dies crick­et saga. The re­cent 2-1 T20 Se­ries de­feat by Pak­istan, while ut­ter­ly pre­dictable – about as sur­pris­ing as a new Trump Tar­iff – still war­rants a mo­ment of re­flec­tion be­fore I re­sume my reg­u­lar pro­gram­ming.

Se­ri­ous­ly, when will King Sam­my and his roy­al crew fi­nal­ly get the bat­ting or­der and team se­lec­tion right? They seem to be con­duct­ing ran­dom ex­per­i­ments on the field, all while the team con­sis­tent­ly un­der­per­forms. It’s like they’re try­ing to rein­vent the wheel us­ing man­goes and zabo­cas. And the de­ci­sions! When, in the his­to­ry of T20 crick­et, has a play­er from a Full Mem­ber na­tion re­tired mid-in­nings with­out an in­jury? That was a trick ques­tion, as it’s nev­er hap­pened be­fore.

And what ex­act­ly is Kea­cy Car­ty’s des­ig­nat­ed role bat­ting at num­ber sev­en? Are we sim­ply hop­ing an all-rounder mag­i­cal­ly ma­te­ri­alis­es mid-game, per­haps from a puff of smoke like Machel Mon­tano ap­pear­ing on stage? It’s baf­fling, yet, in West In­dies crick­et, noth­ing should se­ri­ous­ly sur­prise us any­more.

What I want to tru­ly write about is the stun­ning Test se­ries be­tween Eng­land and In­dia. Twen­ty-one cen­turies scored, ty­ing the record for a five-Test se­ries. 7,187 runs scored—the sec­ond-most in a se­ries. I could fill this en­tire col­umn with glo­ri­ous sta­tis­tics, but let’s just say it was Test crick­et at its most mag­nif­i­cent. Twen­ty-five days of ab­sorb­ing, en­thralling crick­et where the game swung back and forth like a pen­du­lum on a par­tic­u­lar­ly windy day.

While watch­ing it, my mind kept drift­ing to leg­ends like Gor­don Greenidge, Alvin Kallicha­ran, Sir Viv Richards, Sir Andy Roberts, and so many more. How would they have coped in this mod­ern era of “Bazball” and a grit­ty, nev­er-say-die In­di­an team? I’ll an­swer my ques­tion: they would have coped spec­tac­u­lar­ly, and the Queen’s Park Oval would have been packed to ca­pac­i­ty, buzzing with an en­er­gy sad­ly ab­sent from West In­dies Test match­es for over a decade.

When I cast my eyes on Test crick­et now, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter wit­ness­ing a se­ries of such breath­tak­ing qual­i­ty, I gen­uine­ly feel sad­ness for our younger gen­er­a­tion. They wouldn’t grasp the sheer al­lure, the mag­net­ic pull, that keeps purists re­turn­ing day af­ter day, for five glo­ri­ous days, to watch the strate­gic bat­tle of ball ver­sus bat. It’s a true fight put up by 22 glad­i­a­tors on a crick­et field, a chess match played with leather and wil­low, not a quick T20 lime.

I was thrilled In­dia won that last Test. They played Test crick­et ex­act­ly as it should be played: fierce­ly, com­pet­i­tive­ly, and with an at­ti­tude that re­fused to lie down and play dead when the chips were stacked against them. They em­braced the fight, rather than look­ing for the near­est ex­it.

It was the first time in Eng­land since 2004 that all the Tests went in­to a fifth day. No won­der there were in­juries up­on in­juries to play­ers of both teams. The sheer lev­el of per­for­mance from the play­ers in the fi­nal days of that fifth Test left spec­ta­tors, pun­dits, and of­fi­cials in awe. The three Eng­land seam­ers, Gus Atkin­son, Josh Tongue, and Jamie Over­ton, be­tween them bowled 53.4 overs, with Chris Woakes adding an­oth­er 14 overs be­fore he dis­lo­cat­ed his shoul­der in In­dia’s first in­nings.

The re­al he­roes, those three seam­ers, stood tall in In­dia’s sec­ond in­nings when they de­liv­ered a mon­u­men­tal 79 overs be­tween them. How did they muster the strength to do it? That is what Test crick­et is all about: guts, de­ter­mi­na­tion, fight, willpow­er, per­sis­tence, and a whole lot of ibupro­fen, I imag­ine.

No one showed more guts, grit, and pure the­atre than Mo­hammed Sir­aj. What a sheer plea­sure it must be for a cap­tain to have him on his side. He al­ways seems to give 150%, and when you think he plays sec­ond fid­dle to the mighty Jasprit Bum­rah, his char­ac­ter stands tall. Bum­rah or no Bum­rah, give Sir­aj the ball, and some­thing ex­tra­or­di­nary will hap­pen. He’s like that one team­mate who ac­tu­al­ly brings ice for the cool­er.

This Eng­land team has tru­ly sprung to life un­der coach Bren­don Mc­Cul­lum and his “Bazball” phi­los­o­phy. They take the game to the op­po­si­tion with a pos­i­tive, al­most care­free ap­proach. Their open­ers, Zak Craw­ley and Ben Duck­ett, at­tack from the very first ball, of­ten strik­ing at rates close to 100. These are open­ers whose tra­di­tion­al du­ty is to wear off the shine, but they were clear­ly on a mis­sion to scorch it off.

What can you say about Joe Root? He’s like the tide – con­stant­ly com­ing in, bring­ing a fresh wave of runs. Sachin Ten­dulkar’s record for the most test runs must be look­ing over its shoul­der, po­lite­ly ask­ing: “Is that you, Joe?” The play­er who tru­ly cap­ti­vates me is Har­ry Brook; he must sure­ly have some West In­di­an roots with his su­perb at­tack­ing style. Some might call it too at­tack­ing, lead­ing to his down­fall (def­i­nite­ly a West In­di­an trait). He will make many a hun­dred in years to come, and take note, he plays all the for­mats.

Ben Stokes is a feisty com­peti­tor, and he leads the team in that way. When he even­tu­al­ly goes, Eng­land will miss his lead­er­ship and his no-non­sense at­ti­tude. Jamie Smith, the wick­et­keep­er, seemed ner­vous in this Test, but he’s an­oth­er crick­eter em­brac­ing the Bazball way. Their seam bowlers are per­fect­ly suit­ed to Eng­lish con­di­tions, but we’ll have to see how they fare down un­der, where Jofra Archer and Mark Wood, if they stay fit, will tru­ly come in­to their own with raw pace in the Aus­tralian con­di­tions. Their best spin­ning op­tion, Shoaib Bashir, was un­for­tu­nate­ly in­jured, but Eng­land will re­ly heav­i­ly on pace go­ing for­ward.

One would think the In­di­an team, miss­ing the likes of Ro­hit Shar­ma and Vi­rat Kohli, might have strug­gled in Eng­lish con­di­tions. But the fight shown by KL Rahul, Yashasvi Jaisw­al, and Rishabh Pant (who bat­ted with a frac­tured right in­step) was tru­ly in­spir­ing. And what can you say about the man who took up the man­tle of cap­tain­cy and led from the front, Shub­man Gill? As a young play­er com­ing through, we saw his po­ten­tial, but his in­spi­ra­tional lead­er­ship and su­perb bat­ting en­sured In­dia kept com­ing back in the se­ries.

Their all-rounders, the spin twins Ravin­dra Jade­ja and Wash­ing­ton Sun­dar, in that drawn fourth Test, epit­o­mised de­fi­ance. They kept Eng­land at bay for two and a half ses­sions, forc­ing a draw with three out­stand­ing qual­i­ties: sound tech­nique, un­wa­ver­ing ap­pli­ca­tion, and sheer de­ter­mi­na­tion. Some might add con­cen­tra­tion, but it was, above all, a fight for their coun­try.

Then there are their seam­ers af­ter Sir­aj: two gen­uine com­peti­tors in Prasidh Kr­ish­na and Akash Deep. Are we for­get­ting Bum­rah? Here’s the amaz­ing stat: In­dia won the two Test match­es where Bum­rah did not play. Could it be that when he’s there, the oth­er bowlers un­con­scious­ly drop their lev­el, ex­pect­ing him to take the bulk of the wick­ets? These seam­ers should now re­alise they can pro­duce the goods for their coun­try, with or with­out Bum­rah.

Make no mis­take, this In­di­an team will take some beat­ing, es­pe­cial­ly on their home turf, where I’m cer­tain they’ll de­ploy even more spin­ning op­tions. How does In­dia find all these in­cred­i­ble play­ers? Cer­tain­ly not from the IPL (In­di­an Pre­mier League), but from a prop­er, struc­tural­ly sound first-class crick­et base (are you watch­ing CWI?).

I am one who is com­plete­ly against the idea of a two-tier Test sys­tem, as it feels like sep­a­rat­ing the ‘haves’ from the ‘have-nots’ with­in the very fab­ric of the game. How­ev­er, when you stack up that cap­ti­vat­ing Eng­land vs In­dia Test se­ries against our re­cent Aus­tralia vs West In­dies se­ries – well, it’s like com­par­ing a gourmet meal to a cold dou­bles.

Sud­den­ly, the two-tier ar­gu­ment starts mak­ing a bit more sense, even if it leaves a sour taste. The big ques­tion, then, is how do our teams get bet­ter if they’re not fac­ing the big guns? It’s like try­ing to learn to swim in a kids’ pool when you need to be bat­tling some se­ri­ous waves. But on the oth­er hand, the just con­clud­ed Eng­land se­ries was one for the ages, while the West In­dies se­ries was one to for­get; this paints a pret­ty clear pic­ture.

Un­less things change dras­ti­cal­ly, we will see the West In­dies play­ing Zim­bab­we, Bangladesh, Ire­land, Sri Lan­ka, and the Nether­lands by 2027 in Test match­es. As a friend of mine said, “ouch!”

Ed­i­tor’s note:

The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.