Test cricket wins back its place in the sun

London: Less than a week ago, the general wisdom was that Test cricket, if not quite on its last legs, was walking with a pronounced limp.

Armchair physicians prescribed a shot of adrenaline. Others favoured amputation. And then England and India strode out at Lord's.

The effect on the sport of an enthralling five days is incalculable. Test-match acolytes rarely need convincing of its beauty, but get easily dismissed as old bores. And with football's once considerable summer break increasingly resembling a long weekend, the perception was clear: speak now, or forever linger on the inside pages.

Even so, after the miserable sogginess of the Sri Lanka series, a Lord's Test against the world No. 1 side played out under sunshine for the most part felt like a basis for negotiation. We needed some decent cricket too. Glorious to report, both teams came up trumps.

Fresh morsel

Every day offered a fresh morsel. On Thursday, there was England's stoic resistance against the swinging ball, and on Friday the renewed swagger of Kevin Pietersen. Saturday produced a back-to-basics hundred from Rahul Dravid — the wrong Indian maybe, but masterful stuff nonetheless.

On Sunday it was the turn of Ishant Sharma and Matt Prior, and on Monday it was one vignette after another. If Test cricket is dead, long live Test cricket.

Underscoring the whole thing, of course, was the subplot to end them all, though there would be no fairy tale 100th international hundred for Sachin Tendulkar — just an attractive 34, a viral infection, a strokeless 12 and an inevitable controversy surrounding the absent DRS.

Somewhere amid it all was a game of cricket between two of the three best Test teams in the world. Four years ago England had India nine down in the first Test at Lord's, but were robbed by a combination of Mahendra Singh Dhoni's grit, the weather and a poor lbw decision by Steve Bucknor against last man Sreesanth. India went on to win the series 1-0.

This was not so much payback — revenge is not a word professional cricketers like to use — but a chance for England to put behind them a defeat that rankled. They did it in style.

The two performances most thrilling for Andy Flower were those of Kevin Pietersen and Stuart Broad, who jostled for the man-of-the-match award before cricket's old prejudice against bowlers had the final say.

Stroke-filled knock

All summer Pietersen has insisted he still feels the buzz of the international game, and a stroke-filled 85 in the Rose Bowl Test against Sri Lanka appeared to back him up. But he needed a headline innings, and here he produced, scoring slowly at first as the ball swung, then trusting his old instincts.