LONDON: The World Test Championship final between Australia and India at the Oval starts Wednesday against a backdrop of fears for the long format given the growth of Twenty20 franchise leagues.

Not that there’s anything new about cricket-lovers worrying about the future of their sport.

Indeed it was following an 1882 Test at the Oval, after Australia had inflicted England’s first defeat on home soil, that the Sporting Times published a mock obituary of English cricket that referenced its cremation, with “the Ashes taken to Australia”.

The Ashes has since become a shorthand for Anglo-Australian Test cricket, with a five-match series in England starting next week — just days after the scheduled finish of the WTC final.

One current concern is that the riches on offer to leading players from T20 tournament such as the Indian Premier League, and the vastly shorter time it takes to earn the money than by playing five-day Test cricket, makes the traditional format of the game much less attractive to leading modern-day players.

The International Cricket Council’s response was to devise the WTC, a two-year cycle of games culminating in a final, in order to give Test cricket greater context.

This week’s match marks the culmination of the second edition, with New Zealand having defeated India in the inaugural 2021 final at Southampton.

But Australia star batsman Steve Smith, whose side just missed out on the inaugural final, after losing their last home series against India, is adamant it is a match his side want to win just as much as a 50-over or T20 World Cup final.

“We’re all just looking forward to this (match against India),” Smith told reporters at the Oval on Monday. “It’s two years in the making, of getting to the final of the World Test Championship, it’s a big week for us and India, so we’ll get through this then we’ll focus after that.

“Every game you play for your country is important.” When India, now cricket’s financial powerhouse, won the 1983 one-day World Cup final, it transformed the format’s status in the sport’s most populous nation and with it the economy of the global game.

It was a similar story in 2007 when Indian officials’ scepticism about T20 cricket evaporated after India’s dramatic victory over arch-rivals Pakistan in the 2007 World Twenty20 final in South Africa.

INDIA COY OVER ASHWIN

India captain Rohit Sharma was tight-lipped on whether star spinner Ravichandran Ashwin would feature in the showpiece. The last time India played a Test at the London ground, in 2021, they left out Ashwin despite the star off-spinner’s excellent record — 474 wickets at 23.93 in 92 matches.

Instead they opted to play spin-bowling all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja alongside four seamers in a match in which India beat England by 157 runs.

Both bowlers are in India’s 15-man squad for the WTC final.

“In terms of the combination, better we wait until tomorrow (Wednesday) — that’s a common answer, I think,” Rohit said with a smile during a pre-match press conference on Tuesday.

Early season surfaces in England generally do not give spinners much help and Rohit said the Oval pitch and the overhead conditions looked as though they would assist seam bowlers.

“When we played the last Test match here at the Oval, it looked very similar to this and then as the game went on, it got better and better and slower and slower, then the reverse-swing came into play on the fifth day,” he said.

India lost the inaugural WTC showpiece match by eight wickets to New Zealand in Southampton in 2021. Rohit said his men were determined to learn from their mistakes on that occasion.

Australia, meanwhile, boast an impressive pace attack led by captain Pat Cummins. The pacer confirmed fellow fast bowler Scott Boland will play the final.

Australia had added Michael Neser to their 15-man squad after Josh Hazlewood was ruled out of the one-off contest with a side strain and an Achilles issue.

The Australia skipper said picking Boland ahead of Neser as the third pacer, behind Cummins and Mitchell Starc, was “no surprise” considering the variety the Victorian offered.

“We’re big on everyone bowling slightly differently,” Cummins told reporters on the eve of the match. “Scotty is a seam bowler on a good length, but he just offers something slightly different to Joshy Hazlewood, and Starcy being a left hander is bit different.

“I don’t think there’s ever a pecking order. You think about the three guys that you want to go out and play

Seam-bowling all-rounder Cameron Green and off-spinner Nathan Lyon complete Australia’s formidable attack. Cummins acknowledged they would need to carefully manage Green’s bowling workload especially as the all-rounder switches format following his T20 stint in the recent IPL.

AUSTRALIA (probable): Pat Cummins (captain), David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Steven Smith, Travis Head, Cameron Green, Alex Carey (wicket-keeper), Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Scott Boland

INDIA (probable): Rohit Sharma (captain), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Ravindra Jadeja, Ishan Kishan (wicket-keeper), R Ashwin, Umesh Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2023