Can T20 specialists be successful test cricketers?

Before we actually go into this discussion, let’s see first the present situation of T20 and Test Cricket respectively.

T20 cricket or the "BOOM BOOM" cricket is the most popular format of cricket these days. It includes glamour, entertainment and many other factors which make it the people’s favourite.Where as Test Cricket, the traditional 5-day cricket is seeing its decline as the years go by. People do not prefer watching a cricket match which last for 5 days, they would rather prefer watching T20 cricket which lasts for only 4 hours plus it provides more entertainment.T20 leagues like the IPL in India, Big Bash League in Australia and The Ram Slam Tournament in South Africa makes the T20 format even more popular.

So, as the title says "Can T20 specialists be successful test cricketers?".My answer would be Yes,provided how far and how fast they can adapt themselves from playing the 4 hour running T20 cricket to the 5-day traditional Test Cricket. We have seen players like David Warner and Shane Watson perform greatly in the recently concluded Ashes Series in which they whitewashed England 5-0.But also we have seen players like Aaron Finch,Eoin Morgan, Glenn Maxwell who all are T20 specialists but have either not featured in the Test Squad or they didn’t perform as they were expected to.

The best example of adapting between T20 and Test Cricket would be none other than the Captain Of India, MS Dhoni himself. When Dhoni came into Team India, he was known for his hard hitting and huge sixes. But we have also seen him scoring 6 hundreds and 28 fifties in his 87 match Test career at an average of 39.This is because he was able to adapt the format effectively. Another example would be Ravindra Jadeja,whom we have seen performing quite well in Test matches,although it might be too early to call him a great test cricketer.Virat Kohli is also such a cricketer who has performed exceptionally in Test Cricket and is also a T20 specialist. His recent performance against South Africa proves so.But we have also seen players like Suresh Raina and Yuvraj Singh being great T20 players perform poorly in tests.Talking about countries and players other than India,we have David Warner,Shane Watson,Michael Hussey,Hashim Amla,AB Devillers who all are very good test cricketers but also regularly feature in T20 cricket for their respective nations.

Every cricketer who gets a chance to play for the national team are all hugely talented and have the capability of plying in all 3 formats of the game.Its the temperament and the capability to adapt to different formats of the game differ them from each other.A player who can do so can not only be a T20 specialist but also great Test cricketer too.