THE YEAR is 2020 (let’s make this symbolic) and a cricket match is being staged at Lord’s to commemorate the death of a format that has long since gone the way of the dinosaur and the dodo. The players take the field dressed in white, with neither names nor numbers splashed over their shirts, while visitors to the Lord’s Museum file respectfully past an urn containing the ashes of a burnt scorebook recording a maiden over and watch an old Pathe newsreel of Trevor Bailey taking an hour and a half to get off the mark.

“Test Cricket 1877-2020. RIP.” The headstone is already at the engravers, with instructions to etch a similar inscription to the one commissioned by Spike Milligan: “I told you I was ill.” Far-fetched? It might seem so when the House Full notices go up for the Ashes later this summer, but England versus Australia is the last remaining Test series capable of filling every ground at every venue. Even in India, where 90,000 people will flock to Eden Gardens for a one-dayer in Calcutta, the crowd for a Test match can almost travel to the ground in the back of the same motorised rickshaw.

England, or so we thought, was the one country in which Test cricket would continue to thrive in the Twenty20 era, but while yesterday’s attendance was not great, it at least allowed the Sky cameramen to make their customary trawl around the ground for crowd shots. The search is usually concentrated on cleavage, but all they got on Thursday were rows of empty seats and a couple of old boys in duffle coats.

Starting a Test series in England on May 6 is not only mad, it quite possibly — in terms of an acceptable temperature at the workplace — infringes the shops and factories act. It has often been said that making his way through the Long Room before taking the field on the first day of a Lord’s Test is guaranteed to give a player the goose pimples. On this occasion, however, the goose pimples were more closely related to frostbite than a sense of history or occasion, and for natives of Trinidad and Jamaica, leaving the pavilion was the equivalent of Captain Oates popping out of the tent.

There were three good reasons for scheduling a Test for the first week in May, namely: money, more money, and, er, that’s it. The England and Wales Cricket Board claim, year after year, that they are contractually obliged to their television broadcaster to stage seven Tests per summer, when the truth is that the ECB draws up their preferred package and not the other way around. They’d love to see an increase in global warming, as they’d then be able to start the season in January.

Money was the motive for clambering into bed with Sir Allen Stanford, and why the Ashes series was sold — along with every other game of live summer cricket — to the fattest wallet. The danger of restricting the Ashes to satellite television is that the enormous interest in cricket generated by the 2005 Ashes series, which has already dwindled, is in serious danger of being lost altogether. The game still needs promoting and even in the unlikely event of the 2009 Ashes being as gripping as the series four years ago, it will not inspire a new generation of youngsters if they can’t see it.

Test cricket may be steeped in tradition in this country but you can’t take its enduring health as much for granted as the ECB seem to think you can. We’re used to Saturday crowds attracting their customary mix of Vikings, nuns and hairy men dressed as schoolgirls, but when the first Test was given a Wednesday start, the prospect of no Saturday cricket at Lord’s duly came to pass.

And what really is the point of this ludicrous two-match series? If you want the game to thrive, you have to give people a contest that actually means something — and, for preference, at a time of year when furry animals have finally come out of hibernation. Andrew Strauss will doubtless be lifting the Wisden Trophy some time tomorrow, and a proud man he’ll surely be. But an open-topped bus ride around Trafalgar Square, and MBEs all round, may not be on the agenda.

One of the biggest worries for Test cricket is that it finds itself vulnerable to public apathy despite having become undeniably more vibrant than it was years ago, when the game moved along at much the same pace as an Arctic glacier and Jim Laker was the ideal TV commentator. If you shut your eyes when Jim was at the microphone (and the urge was sometimes overpowering) you were never quite sure whether you were listening to the cricket or the shipping forecast.

By comparison, modern Test matches are fast and vibrant, although it’s becoming harder and harder to get excited about any form of cricket when there is so much of it. The product has to be special, and as soon as it becomes run-of-the-mill, as Twenty20 will inevitably become through overkill, people will simply lose interest. Chris Gayle’s recently stated opinion that Twenty20 holds more personal appeal than a Test match can perhaps be taken as not entirely representative, as the West Indies captain appears to have an attention span that barely survives walking out for the toss, never mind five whole days.

However, Twenty20 undeniably offers more cash for less work, and the Indian Premier League continues to raise the possibility of the more glamorous players hawking themselves off, as freelance agents, to a more attractive workplace.

It’s time to rip up central contracts and pay competitive sums for playing in a Test match.

The ECB, which forks out £1.3m to each county every year, can certainly afford it. When playing Test cricket for your country becomes less attractive than turning out for Chennai Super Kings, it’s time to start worrying.