Let us cheer what remains of Test cricket

It's not often that Test cricket takes centre stage in a country that's long sold its soul to the game's newer formats. Or, perhaps more accurately, in a country where a majority of our top cricketers look at their white flannels as a vestige of an inconvenient past that requires too much hardwork, too much practice, too much commitment, too much technique, and offers too little money in return.

But for some of us, in the middle of a thrilling Ashes series that took another dramatic turn in Birmingham on Wednesday, it is becoming hard to turn our eyes away from men in pale, boring whites lighting up the English summer with a concoction of perfume balls and pulls in front of square.

If nothing else, it is a time for some cricket fans in India - the ones who still enjoy the sport when the boundary ropes are pulled back, when the ball is jumping off a length, and when the sixes have dried up - to pick a favourite among two foreign teams and try to simulate some old-fashioned deep-in-the-guts passion.

To appreciate a 52 among the ruins by a 37-year-old Sydneysider called Chris Rogers, who had incidentally made his debut against India at Perth in 2008, only to be dismissed for next to nothing in both innings by an Irfan Pathan in full flow. Or to appreciate good ol' Jimmy Anderson, from jolly ol' Burney, now almost 33, who went wicket-less at Lord's two weeks ago, only to terrorise the Australian middle-order at Edgbaston with a four-wicket flurry over six unplayable overs.

There was a time, not long ago, when we celebrated such stories. When we went from a Hayden-sized walloping at the Wankhede to a VVS Laxman-fashioned miracle at Eden Gardens. When, to be more precise, these stadiums were not the home grounds of the Mumbai Indians and the Kolkata Knight Riders.

To not realise that we have lost something over the last eight "seasons" of the IPL - something other than the Fab Four - is to have forgotten the sweat, prayers and tears that took us from minnows in the '40s to fighters in the '70s to world beaters in the '80s. It is also proof that we've submitted to raucous marketers and dubious commentators. That their hard-sell has converted us from a people who loved the sport to a generation who only consume it. For it is okay to sell merchandise but a sport is in trouble when the act of playing itself needs to be sold by manufacturing excitement and faking analyses.

Instead of focusing on what has been lost and what needs to be regained, however, let's just do the convenient thing today. When Mitchell Starc bowls to Joe Root this afternoon, let's pick a side. And rather than lament what might have been, or fear what will come next, let us cheer what still remains.