Amid weather concerns, India and New Zealand fight for a taste of silverware after near-misses in recent ICC campaigns

Imagine that the guardians of Test cricket, in a bid to assess the future health of the grand old game, dispatch a delegate from its golden age through time and space to watch the inaugural World Test Championship final of 2021.

You can take your pick as to when that golden era might exactly have been, but whatever their year of origin, any time-traveller alighting on Southampton this week might assume Test cricket was in a pretty moribund state. Here, after all, is the sport's brand-new showpiece occasion, more than a decade in the making after endless false starts - ones that screamed, more than anything else, of a fundamental lack of faith in the product.

And instead of taking its rightful place at Lord's, Eden Gardens or the MCG, the contest has been shunted out to a souped-up service station on the lesser-travelled east-bound carriageway of the M27, where for the next five days (or six) India and New Zealand are braced for weather as torrential as the abuse that the WTC format has attracted in the past two years - not least from the new ICC chairman, Greg Barclay, who declared on the day of his investiture last autumn that it was "not fit for purpose".

A maximum of 4000 people a day will be permitted to witness the spectacle - 25% capacity, in keeping with the UK's current lockdown restrictions. That figure might have been more come day four, and the government's so-called Freedom Day of June 21, but that date is a can that has been kicked on down the road for another day.

So there's a fair amount conspiring to dampen the mood, you might say.

There is, however, an alternative narrative, one that, with an iota of heft from those who profess to love and nurture the sport, could be resonating high above this current air of mild apathy.

The WTC final will be taking place in spite of a once-in-a-generation global pandemic at the now-famous Ageas Bowl, cricket's original bio-secure venue, the existence of which unequivocally saved the ECB's bacon in the summer of 2020, and showed the wider cricketing world how to ensure that the show can go on in these times.

The contest will also feature, indisputably and thankfully, the two best Test teams in the world.

There's been nothing pretty about the permutations on the WTC table. The pandemic caused such havoc to the Future Tours Programme that a points average had to be introduced to mitigate the rash of cancelled series. But after flirtations from two flawed outfits, England and Australia, it is India and New Zealand who have surged to the top of the tree, and irrespective of how the coming days pan out, it would be difficult to wish for two better representatives for Test cricket in 2021, both as a statement of its current health, and as an expression of its future hopes.

First and foremost, India's presence is sacrosanct. They are here because they are an outstanding, well-rounded outfit, unbeatable at home and now indomitable overseas, as their stunning, bare-bones triumph in Australia last winter testifies. But the presence of their vast market also gives the format hope of long-term traction - of TV viewership, sponsorship interest, administrative buy-in. All the things that we wish did not matter so much in elite-level sport, but which we know to be key to the cause.

The prospective absence of India from such a showpiece had, after all, been the main sticking point in the broadcast negotiations for the format's abortive first attempts. And now, as it happens, the near converse status applies. Following last month's postponement of the IPL, the void in India's daily sporting diet is so gaping that this one-off contest has an even greater opportunity to seize the limelight and the narrative - if the weather can give it half a chance, of course.

But then there's New Zealand - the David to India's Goliath, the stones in their shoe, as Thomas Tuchel said of Chelsea's Champions League victory over Manchester City. They are a team that has become used to being patronised as plucky underdogs, but they have shown some seriously sharp teeth in their six-year journey to the uppermost echelons of the sport - via Brendon McCullum's heavy-metal cricket at the 2015 World Cup, to Kane Williamson's more sanguine but no less intense leadership in more recent years.

Back at the 2019 World Cup, it was quietly suggested that New Zealand had pooped the Big Three party by knocking India out in their semi-final clash at Old Trafford. However, the extraordinary events of that subsequent final against England proved beyond all question their right to be considered among cricket's on-field elite.

As model of what cricket can be when it looks beyond the self-interest of its big boys, New Zealand's achievements in recent years have been little short of heroic. Who, apart from 1.2 billion-odd Indians, would begrudge them a taste of silverware after such agonising near-misses in recent ICC campaigns?

Most fundamentally, the WTC final is the start of something new for an ancient format. It's taken nigh on 150 years for the sport to reach this point: a willingness to cap Test cricket's eternal quest for context with a true coronation event.

There have been de facto title fights in the recent past, but usually only of a dynastic nature - perhaps most famously, Australia's epic series victory in the Caribbean in 1994-95, the moment at which West Indies' two-decade hegemony was finally ended. The world rankings have added an extra frisson in recent years, especially since the introduction of the ICC's Test mace in 2003, but all too often the handover moments have been lacklustre and debatable, more Duckworth-Lewis recalculation than heavyweight knock-out.

Finally, however, the sport has got its moment, and two sides to savour. New Zealand have warmed up, if that is the right word, with a significant achievement in their own right - a first series win in England since 1999, courtesy a complete squad performance across two Tests at Lord's and Edgbaston. From the form of Devon Conway on debut at Lord's to Tim Southee's ageless display of swing bowling in the same game, they have shown a cohesion that transcends mere experience, and Williamson's elbow niggles aside, could not hope to be better placed for their shot at glory.

India, by contrast, have had only an intra-squad practice to wet their whistle since arriving in England. Yet they have the depth of quality within their ranks to rehearse for most contingencies, and they have been acclimatising in Southampton throughout their build-up period, so could not be better attuned to the ground's vagaries - not least the Australian-style acreage of its vast outfield.

In spite of everything that has conspired against this concept, the moment has finally arrived for Test cricket to reach its pinnacle. Better late than never.