India, April 21 -- There is a theory floating around in the part of social media occupied by those who describe cricket so accurately and fully through numbers that they really put the "stats are not everything" theory under a serious cloud of doubt. It is that the philosophies of batting in a T20 and a Test match, and thus by extension that of the two formats altogether, are fundamentally different, making them almost two different sports. While any traditional cricket lover may instinctively scoff at that idea, what we are seeing in the 2025 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) shows that what is now theory could become reality, if not in all T20 cricket then in this league at least, in the not too distant future.

In Test cricket,...