Kohli & Stokes kept Test Cricket Vibrant

But only one of them loved the Test Championship

Riveting entertainment at Headingley over the course of the first three days of the first Test with plenty of everything – four centuries, four wickets apiece for two England bowlers, a five-fer for the imperious Jasprit Bumrah and all manner of match and result permutations for the remaining two games. You’d be mad to try and pick a winner from here.

Ben Stokes has given Test cricket one of its single greatest boosts in modern times, second only, perhaps, to Virat Kohli whose passion and drive for the game was enormous – no greater than Stokes’ – but more important because he was captain of India rather than England. But both should be equally lauded.

But it remains baffling that Stokes is so ho-hum about the World Test Championship. “I’ve been criticised for the things I’ve said about it before but my views haven’t changed,” he said before the first of five Tests against India at Headingley. Stokes earlier said the WTC was “confusing” and questioned its validity and relevance. He has his reasons.

The WTC is a little confusing, and jampacked with compromises and imperfections, some of them comically silly. Nine teams, six fixtures, three of which will always be contested by the same three teams over five Tests while the others make up the numbers, depending on who has a gap in their schedule and is available - to play two Tests. Two teams will never play against each other.

This ridiculous monster of a competition would not make it past the laughter stage of an organising committee in any other sport in the world, yet eight of the nine teams have embraced it, as you would with a helpless victim of a hit-and-run accident on the side of the road. Ironically, the odds in this absurd tournament are heavily stacked against the ‘Big Three’ and yet, India and Australia are patently ‘all-in’. They love it. Not because it’s ‘the thing’ but because it’s ‘a thing.’

Stokes is his own man and unlikely to be influenced by his employers, but others in English cricket will have noticed another indifference to the WTC being expressed by ECB CEO, Richard Gould, who said it “had its merits” but wasn’t the “be all and end all” for English cricket. Fair enough, and true. But he might have acknowledged that it IS absolutely the be-all-and-end-all for six of the countries involved in it.

The new WTC cycle began with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh playing out a high-scoring draw in Galle. There has been some delectable cricketing friction between the two teams in recent years but, for the most part, the previews to that series centred around their ambitions in the Test Championship and the context it provides for bilateral series. Sri Lanka were genuine contenders for a place in last week’s final until they lost 2-0 to South Africa in their penultimate series.

Stokes said: “All I know is that if we win games of cricket then the rest will take care itself.” So, it’s not quite as difficult to understand as the England captain had initially suggested. His disinterest (distaste?) for the tournament may have started when England were docked a preposterous 19 points at the start of the last cycle for slow over-rates which made their route to the final even harder – it effectively ended their chances.

Teams should make more effort to keep up with the required pace of play and they should be penalised when they don’t, but when the WTC was battling for credibility, it didn’t need one of the ‘big names’ being disqualified by penalty points. But then, if England had been taking it more seriously, they might have bowled a few more overs each day in the last Ashes series.

Perhaps a victory in Leeds and a series win against India will ignite Stokes’ interest in reaching the next final at Lord’s in two years’ time. Every other team certainly wants to be there. It would be shame if England are left behind in the collective desire to support Test cricket with a competition and a prize which really means something, even in its current format. Imagine how much support there’ll be for it when it’s eventually chiselled into something which actually looks like a league table.

Ball-by-ball commentary on the England/India Test series can be found on the TalkSPORT Cricket YouTube channel for listeners outside the UK. I’m grateful and excited in equal measure to be part of the team. Subscribe and join us, if you can…