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The Fourth Format

We've entered a new zone in cricket - or so the supposed "fusion" between Test and T20 would have you believe.

Jarrod Kimber's avatar
Jarrod Kimber
Oct 23, 2025
∙ Paid

You’re travelling through another format — a format not only of Test and T20, but of ODI.

A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are those of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead — your next stop: The Test T20 Zone.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it lies another format —
a format of strategy, of multiple innings, and of the follow-on… in white-ball cricket.

You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas.

There is a fourth format ®— as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between Tests and T20, between light and sound, between science and superstition.

And it lies between the pit of cricket’s fears and the summit of its knowledge.

This is a version of cricket we call… “The fourth format ® .”

****

Yes, that intro was over the top. We need to break the fourth wall here, and be clear: we were just having fun with this new cricket contraption.

Test Twenty ™, a new form of the game that is impossible to say three times in a row even stone cold sober.

We’ve seen near-endless repeats of the same press release, so I thought I would do three minutes more research on this than most other news outlets did.

I found their Wikipedia page. And I’m no expert on these matters, but this feels like the kind of page that is made by a PR company.

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