West Indies Back-up Chris Gayle's Claims on the Future of Test Cricket

Tell Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook that English Test cricket had just suffered one of its most demoralizing days for years and they will not believe you. Both had the pride of England hundreds to sustain them during a desperately downcast day.

But had they wanted to take a wider look – and as two successful young England batsmen why should they? – they would have gazed upon a game undergoing one of its periodic collapses of confidence. As Twenty20 grows in strength, however, the fear is that a collapse of confidence will soon become a total breakdown.

Officially, 5,000 spectators turned up at The Riverside yesterday, but to arrive at such a figure seemed to demand a degree in creative accountancy. It felt more like 3,000 — the lowest first-day crowd in modern times.

To add to the gloom, the West Indies captain, Chris Gayle, led his team into the second Test with an extraordinary admission that he would not be all that sad if Test cricket died completely, to be replaced by an endless diet of Twenty20. There have been better rallying cries: the West Indies looked entirely uninspired and England finished the day on 302 for two.

The coach, John Dyson, would not be drawn on whether Gayle's remarks had a bearing on the side's performance yesterday. He said: "I've not had a chance to talk to Chris about what was reported in the papers. All we're focused on in the dressing room is this match."

Bopara, with three hundreds in successive Tests, so emulating the feat of his Essex mentor, Graham Gooch, was in no mood to downgrade his achievement. "A Test century is a Test century," he said. "It wasn't the noise I got at Lord's after getting a hundred but inside it means a lot for me to get a Test hundred for England. It doesn't matter if it is in front of thousands and thousands or ten people. A hundred is a hundred."

But even Bopara could not be bothered with another individualistic celebration after his latest 100. He gave us a bow-and-arrow routine in Barbados, and acted out the inscribing of his name on the honors board at Lord's. This time he just raised his bat to a polite ripple of applause.

He did provide some optimism for the future. "Playing in the IPL was amazing," he said. "It was a great experience. I would love to do it again. But Test cricket is still the pinnacle of the game. The feeling I get when I get to 100, there is no better feeling. As a young boy I always wanted to play Test cricket. You want to see if you can do what your heroes did."

It remains to be seen if the next generation will feel the same way.