The World Test Championship final between Australia and India at the Oval starts Wednesday against a backdrop of fears for the long format given the growth of Twenty20 franchise leagues. Not that there's anything new about cricket-lovers worrying about the future of their sport. Indeed it was following an 1882 Test at the Oval, after Australia had inflicted England's first defeat on home soil, that the Sporting Times published a mock obituary of English cricket that referenced its cremation, with "the Ashes taken to Australia".