South Africa can shed their ‘chokers' tag against Aussies

Harry Latham-Coyle on the World Test Championship final

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Peering over his shoulder from his perch of the Mound Stand, Old Father Time will at last look upon something new. Scythe draped over its back, the weathervane has stood prominent and proud at Lord’s for one year short of a century, a constant amid the ebbs and flows of a fluctuating game ever more imperilled.

It is several years since the World Test Championship contextualised the uncontextualisable game in an attempt to bat away the creeping threats of a sport evolving away from its anachronistic primary form of combat.

Australia and South Africa arrive carrying rich histories and, one hopes, bright futures for a clash of contrasts between haves and have-nots, helping to keep the deep red flame burning. Perhaps it is a surprise that it has taken three editions of this final to come to the self-proclaimed “Home of Cricket”, the pandemic forcing a relocation to a bubbled bowl on the outskirts of Southampton in 2021 before the ICC iconography bedaubed The Oval two years ago.

If there is a sense that this competition will need severe refinement to achieve its purpose of saving what can be salvaged from a format under siege, weeks like these are reminders of the good of the game, intriguingly matched combatants in a meeting that matters with the Test mace up for grabs.

Not all are content with this competition in its current construct – the