SUPERB Test Match – England’s 31-run victory over India at Edgbaston, was a game racked with tension almost throughout its four days. Since the match was England’s 1,000th Test we might believe the cricketing gods decreed it would showcase cricket at its very best.

Perhaps, too, they aimed at message at the sport’s guardians on its home turf – the England & Wales Cricket Board. So besotted is it with short-form cricket, allocating ever more of the season to it, complete with bizarre ideas like a ten-ball over, perhaps delivered by more than one bowler, that it has lost sight of what makes truly gripping cricket.

The essence is context. In a 20-over game at first-class level the soaring sixes and/or rattling wickets have little context. That is why these games, though exciting at the time, are forgotten almost as soon as they are finished. They are a skirmish, as distinct from a battle.

And it was because England were engaged in battle with the world’s top-ranked team that the 4-74 taken in the first innings by England’s Sam Curran, playing in only his second Test at 20, set him on the way to becoming man of the match, secured by a half century in the second innings. And it was also because India’s Virat Kohli, the world’s No 1 batsman, mastered England with 149 in the first innings that the capture of his wicket in the second was vital – the England supporters willing it on the edge of their seats. When Kohli reached his half century it looked as though he would win the game off his own bat. That he then fell to Ben Stokes, today’s Ian Botham, appearing in highly-abnormal circumstances, was pure theatre. All that drama will live forever. Cricket of that quality needs no embellishment – flares, music, cheer leaders, contrived playing regulations. For my money the only black mark was Kohli blowing farewell kisses to England captain Joe Root after he, Kohli, ran out Root, seeking his first century for some while, on 80 – more drama that will endure.

Root later showed cricket’s proper spirit by applauding Kohli’s century, albeit (and understandably) without particular vigour.

To crown all, the game was played in whites, which pleases the eye regardless of the state of play. That’s why tranquil cricket can have as much appeal as the frantic stuff. Long-live, figuratively speaking, deck chairs at Worcester, as a former editor of Wisden, Matthew Engel, has valuably urged. Cricket as balm, an antidote to stress: there’s a great case to be made out, completely unrecognised by the EWCB. But this much is certain. If Test cricket vanishes, we will have lost the finest sport our race has yet devised.

FORMER Durham City planning officer Tony Scott appears to have struck a raw nerve with his warning that expansion of the university threatens the character of the city. Truth is, though, that Durham has been top heavy with its university – students and buildings – for decades. Despite the beauty of the riverside and the grandeur of the cathedral and the castle, it’s off-putting to visitors. And yet two other historic English cities find similar university dominance draws tourists in droves: Oxford and Cambridge.