The Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad witnessed another remarkable IPL final on Sunday. Royal Challengers Bengaluru defeated Gujarat Titans to lift their second consecutive title. The two best teams in the tournament reached the final. The better team won on the night. But the significance of the match goes beyond the trophy. What unfolded over the past two months was yet another reminder that the arguments advanced by cricket's purists against T20 cricket, and the IPL in particular, have not merely aged badly. They have been comprehensively disproved.

Look at the final itself. There was pressure. There was strategy. There was high-quality bowling. There was intelligent batting. There was fielding of the highest standard. There were moments when one mistake could have altered the course of the match. In other words, it was cricket at its finest. That is the inconvenient truth for those who continue to insist that only Test cricket deserves to be regarded as the game's purest expression.

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The strange thing about this argument is that it ignores history. When Kerry Packer launched World Series Cricket in the late 1970s, traditionalists reacted with horror. Coloured clothing, day-night matches, white balls, television-driven presentation, and professional salaries, they argued, were sacrilege. Today, those innovations are woven into the very fabric of the game. The opposition........

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