For anyone who did not closely follow the recent India-Sri Lanka Test series, the scoreline will look perfectly respectable. A 1-0 series victory away from home for India. The scorecard will also throw up plenty of positives. Manav Suthar announced himself as a serious Test option, while Shubman Gill began his captaincy with an overseas series win.

But perhaps the most memorable image from the series will be Sonal Dinusha standing at the crease in Colombo, unbeaten on 133, having denied one of the world’s strongest teams a victory that had appeared almost inevitable.

Beyond India’s win

And, strangely enough, an Indian cricket fan should actually celebrate that. Test cricket may have gained something more valuable. For five days in Colombo, Sri Lanka refused to behave like the underdog it was expected to be. India had them exactly where a dominant team would have wanted them. After making 503 for nine, India bowled Sri Lanka out for 290 and enforced the follow-on. The equation appeared simple. India were 10 wickets away from a clean sweep.

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Instead, Sri Lanka batted their way out of trouble. Dinusha followed his first-innings hundred with another century, his third of the series. Keshara Nuwantha and the lower order stayed with him. Slowly, painfully from India’s perspective, Sri Lanka turned what looked like an inevitable defeat into a draw.

Bigger battle

India slipped to fifth in the World Test Championship table, with the missed victory making their qualification path to the final more difficult. But there was another way of looking at Colombo. A team outside Test cricket’s traditional power structure had stood up to one of the giants and refused to disappear.

Test cricket increasingly needs us to look at moments like these differently. The format cannot survive, at least not in the form we know it, if its future rests only on India, Australia and England producing blockbusters against each other. Those contests have history, large audiences and, most importantly, money.

The imbalance in Test cricket

The rest of the cricket world has much less of all three. And that gap is becoming harder to ignore. India is not merely the biggest cricketing market in the world. It is the financial centre of gravity around which the modern game increasingly revolves. According to the BCCI’s audited accounts for 2024-25, IPL 2024 generated Rs 11,703.69 crore in total income. Much of Indian cricket’s financial strength is now concentrated around the franchise ecosystem rather than the traditional bilateral calendar.

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The IPL’s five-year media rights deal for the 2023-27 cycle was worth Rs 48,390 crore. Under the ICC’s current revenue-distribution model, the BCCI is also set to receive around 38.5 per cent of the annual ICC revenue pool, roughly $230 million a year between 2024 and 2027.

A widening gap

But it does raise a larger question. What happens when the richest part of the game becomes so strong that everyone else increasingly struggles to keep pace? For smaller boards, Test cricket is often a financial challenge. Sri Lanka offer a telling example. In the current 2025-27 World Test Championship cycle, all nine teams play six opponents, but the number of Tests varies sharply because series lengths are different. Australia are scheduled to play 22 Tests, England 21 and India 18. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have only 12 each.

The big teams have stronger domestic systems, larger broadcast markets and deeper resources. The others are expected to catch up while often playing fewer matches. The strong stay strong because they have the infrastructure to remain strong; the weaker teams struggle because opportunities themselves become scarce.

That is bad for Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the other nations trying to keep Test cricket alive. But here is the part that the game’s biggest financial power may eventually have to think about more carefully. It is not necessarily good for India either. The beauty of sport lies in uncertainty. A favourite can dominate for four days and still fail to win. A young batsman nobody outside his country knows can suddenly become the reason a giant goes home frustrated.

The value of an upset

That is what Dinusha did in Colombo. And Bangladesh did something even more dramatic in Australia. They arrived in Darwin with little expectation and beat Australia by nine wickets, one of the most remarkable results in Bangladesh’s Test history. Australia came roaring back in the second Test, winning by an innings and 51 runs, but the series ended 1-1. Bangladesh had travelled to Australia and denied one of the world’s most successful Test teams a series victory.

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Those are the moments that make people watch. They become stories, and stories travel beyond the scorecard, creating interest and bringing audiences back to the game. And where there are audiences, there is ultimately value.

Need for a stronger Test ecosystem

The bigger the pool of genuinely competitive teams, the better the product. The IPL will remain at the centre of cricket’s commercial universe. There is no reason for that to change, nor should there be. But the success of franchise cricket should not come at the cost of allowing Test cricket outside the biggest markets to slowly become an afterthought.

The commercial argument for a stronger Test ecosystem is actually quite simple. If more teams can challenge the giants, more matches carry genuine uncertainty. If more young players emerge from those countries, more local audiences have a reason to care. And if audiences care, broadcasters and sponsors have a reason to invest.

More than a points table

The World Test Championship was supposed to give bilateral Tests greater context, and it has certainly made draws and defeats more meaningful. But a points table cannot create a strong Test team. Teams need meaningful series, good domestic red-ball structures, time and money to develop players and, above all, the occasional success that makes players and supporters believe the struggle is worth it.

India got much of what it came for. It won the series and found some promising players for the future. Sri Lanka got something too. And perhaps, so did Test cricket. That is what should be cherished and celebrated, the emergence of teams capable of making the big ones sweat.

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)