The 2,000th Test Match...

...will be played at Lord's on 21 July...surely a time to recognise the beauty and majesty that IS the sublime game. Unmatched, unparalleled, no matter the efforts of it's bastard children.

A person who saw the first Test back in 1877 would probably be able to recognise the 2011 version in an instant...not often you find such a conduit to the past...is that why we love sport so much?

God Save Test Cricket.

Aye, the game is unparalleled. As is the format. For me, the pinnacle of sport in its entirety. There's nothing I like better, from a spectating point of view, to do with my time. Actually take some of my days off to do nothing but watch the great game. I feel privileged to have been brought into it all by my dad. Some hair-lipped muppets could think of nothing worse. Lordy have mercy on the painfully ignorant.

Here's to another 2000.

But the reality is that the ICC currently has no respect for Tests at all. Far too many 2 test series, which are so unfulfilling, and not doing enough to promote Tests ahead of T20s and even ODIs.

India have to lead the way. They simply can't keep asking teams to turn up and hit the Tests completely cold, then mug their opponents off in a sh!tty 2-matcher and then have some excruciatingly 7 match ODI series.

They're what's wrong with cricket, plain and simple.

Yes, it helps them maintain the #1 spot - woo hoo - but they're harming the game.

You know who helps them? Everyone but England. We're the last bastion of hope.

Aye. For example it's amazing the speed in which Australia has pulled its pants down and bent over for India in recent times.

Yeah, the whole SA tour thing is pathetic for instance. They've fallen into line quicker than Tony Blair did with George Bush. It's embarrassing.

Ban India

I wonder if the ICC will do anything to mark the occasion. I think I already know the answer.

Long Live Test Cricket.

Welcome back Zim, however fleeting

Basil wrote:I wonder if the ICC will do anything to mark the occasion. I think I already know the answer.

A celebratory T20 game

yay zimmy


who here honestly gives a rats about 20/20 and jamodis??...I suspect there is not one of us except maybe taips, batty and Karti

The 2,000th Test Match...will be played at Lord's on 21 July..

Yay, i'll be there. Should be absolutely spiffing.

Interesting that the 1000th Test Match was only in November 1984 (2nd Test, Pak. v. NZ, Hyderabad) so there has been as much Test cricket in the last 37 years as there has in the previous 107. The 500th Test was the New Yearr Test (although New Year's Day was a rest day) between Australia and the West Indies at the MCG in 1960-1 (the one following the Tied Test at Brisbane). So in the last 50 years there have been 1500 Tests - an average of 30 per year.

The Centenary Test was the 800th Test so in the 34 years since then half as many Tests again have been played as in the preceding 100 years. Another way of looking at it is that if you had watched the Inaugural Test at the MCG in 1877 aged 7 and seen your final Test aged 89 also at the MCG in Feb-March 1959 there would have been 467 Tests played in between.

A spectator who was aged 89 at Lord's who had seen his first Test aged 7 at the same ground would have seen England v. South Africa in 1929, an interval of 1818 matches.