chronistic three decades ago. Physical books, too, have survived many obituaries. To an extent, Tests is like sarod music, or lyric poetry, or the tiger- wort

BALTIMORE -- Stunned by an early barrage of home runs, the Houston Astros put on an offensive show of their own to emphatically end a five-game losing streak.Jose Altuve homered and had five RBI, and Houston rallied to beat the Baltimore Orioles 15-8 on Friday night despite allowing four homers in the first inning.George Springer went 4 for 5 with a home run for the Astros, who also got long balls from Evan Gattis and Teoscar Hernandez.Early on, Houston appeared destined to drop to .500 for the first time since June 1.The Orioles became the first team in the modern era (since 1900) to open a game with four home runs before making an out, according to STATS. Adam Jones hit Collin McHughs first pitch into the seats in left field and Hyun Soo Kim singled before Manny Machado, Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo homered in succession.Houston answered with a five-run second to go up 6-5. Altuve capped the surge with a two-run double with two outs to chase Wade Miley, who matched the shortest start of his career.You go from really being shell-shocked in the first with the home runs -- to knocking out their starter in the top of the second, Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. Its hard to describe, because youre not used to seeing that at this level. But that was quite an outburst for us.Springer said, The key to that game was that second inning.When the Astros finally got done running around the bases, they had a victory to savor.I know that this game is going to create some momentum, Altuve said, and were going to keep winning games.Altuve became the first Astro to have 20 homers and 20 steals in a season since Carlos Beltran in 2004.The Orioles, meanwhile, have 11 home runs in the first two games of this series. But Baltimore didnt have enough firepower in this one to overcome its poor pitching, which surrendered a season-high 15 runs and 18 hits.Miley was the most obvious culprit. Staked to a 5-1 lead, he got two more outs before being lifted.It was terrible. Its embarrassing for that to happen, he said. I flat-out stunk.The left-hander is 0-2 with a 9.53 ERA in four starts since being traded from Seattle on July 31.Chris Devenski (2-4) allowed one hit in four innings for the Astros after McHugh yielded seven runs and nine hits in three innings.I dont know if Ive ever been blitzed like that before in my career, the right-hander said. Todays game in general was kind of a crazy.Springer provided a glimpse of things to come by hitting a leadoff homer on the fifth pitch from Miley.After the teams traded five-run innings, Baltimore went up 7-6 in the third and Houston pulled even in the fourth.The Astros took a 9-7 lead against Ubaldo Jimenez (5-10) in the fifth. Hernandez blooped an RBI single to center and Springer greeted Tyler Wilson with a run-scoring single.Pedro Alvarez homered in the bottom half before Houston pulled away in the sixth, getting a two-run homer from Altuve and a solo shot from Gattis.ROSTER MOVESAstros: Optioned reliever James Hoyt to Triple-A Fresno and recalled Brad Peacock from the same club. We need some fresh arms up here, Hinch said.Orioles: Optioned Wilson to Triple-A Norfolk after the game.TRAINERS ROOMAstros: OF Jake Marisnick got the night off as he tries to work through a sore groin. Hes played in only two games since Aug. 11. Hes not moving quite at full speed, Hinch said.Orioles: OF Joey Rickard (thumb) wont be ready to play when rosters expand on Sept. 1, manager Buck Showalter said.UP NEXTAstros: Mike Fiers (8-6, 4.66 ERA) makes his 88th career start Saturday, facing the Orioles for the first time.Orioles: Chris Tillman (15-4, 3.46) gets the call after having his start Wednesday pushed back because of a sore right shoulder. Marshon Lattimore Jersey . -- Ty Montgomery had 290 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns, and fifth-ranked Stanford held on to beat No. Wayne Martin Jersey . 10 VCU 85-67 on Thursday night at the Puerto Rico Tip-Off. The Seminoles (4-0) have scored at least 80 points in each of their games. http://www.customsaintsjersey.com/custom-brad-edelman-jersey-large-262e.html . The veteran safety was a starter for the Bengals from 2008-2012. He totaled 41 tackles and three interceptions while starting all but four of the 13 games he played last season. Latavius Murray Jersey . -- Matt Ryan needed one of the best games of his career to lead the Falcons and their depleted offence out of their three-game losing streak last week. Henry Childs Jersey . Mickelson barely made the cut but had the best round of the day with nine birdies and an eagle coupled with two bogeys to sit two shots behind leader Craig Lee of Scotland. Lee shot a 69 for a 12-under 204 total. "I just love the fact I am in contention and have an opportunity in my first tournament of the year here in Abu Dhabi," Mickelson said. I was born in 1990, and am thus squarely a millennial- or, in cricketing terms, a member of the T20 generation. T20, which was invented in 2003, has been around for a majority of my cricket-watching life. We are often told that Test cricket is an anachronistic format, out of touch with modern lifestyles, and especially with the habits and preferences of us millennials. T20, by contrast, represents the games future. My hope, as a lover of Tests, is to persuade you that this conventional wisdom is misguided- that there is no reason why those of us in our twenties or younger cannot enjoy Tests even more than T20.I should admit at the outset that I did not choose to be a Test fan. I was raised as one. In this, as in much else, Test cricket resembles classical music: to those who arent brought up on it, it can seem intimidating, or dull, or outdated. But- as with classical music- the problem lies less with the nature of the format itself, but in how it is presented and described. The same is true of millennial culture: our generation are persistently reduced to labels and stereotypes that range from overly simplistic to wholly false.The idea that ours is a generation fit only for T20 comes from the notion that millennials are chronically attention-deprived, and impatient of anything longer than a six-second Vine. How can five-day Tests work in the age of Snapchat? But ours is a generation strangely attracted to the epic as well as the ephemeral. The success of the Harry Potter and Neapolitan novels is testament to the mass, global appeal of immersive, drawn-out sagas.Nowhere is the rise of the epic more evident than in television: we have gone from watching episodes once a week to binge-viewing entire seasons, of episodes sometimes twice the traditional length, over a weekend. Hollywood blockbusters are longer on average than they were in the 1980s and 1990s, and increasingly form multi-film franchises. In literature, TV and film, the dominant trend is towards the epic: to deep, sustained engagement with a set of characters over dozens of hours.No sport other than cricket has flirted with contraction: and those that arent played to a fixed clock, like baseball and tennis, grow longer every year. Mens tennis, in particular, saw a revival of interest thanks to the Federer-Nadal rivalry, five-hour five-setters that were a test of the viewers endurance as well as the players.Clearly, it is not that millennials cant watch Tests because they are too long. What of the other common claim, that Tests are boring? Here, too, Tests suffer from an image problem, rather than a structural flaw. T20 is branded as accessible entertainment, while Tests are defended in terms of virtue rather than pleasure. But Tests are neither slow nor dull: their pace is lifelike, periods of great intensity accompanied by longer periods of more gradual development. It is a pace common to long novels and novel-like TV dramas. T20, a highly structured format with a narrow range of outcomes, cannot hope to compete with the freedom and variety of Tests. It is no accident that the greatest entertainers of this century- the likes of Warne, Sehwag, Gilchrist, and Pietersen- were most effective and compelling as Test cricketers.One millennial stereotype with considerable truth to it is that we are attracted, above all, to new and memorable experiences. Paradoxically, the oldest form of the game is, to many fans my age, the most unfamiliar. If you are someone whose cricket diet consists primarily of the IPL and other T20, you may well feel, on watchiing your first few Tests, that you are encountering not a different format but a different sport.dddddddddddd. A sport that offers much- in the form of pleasure- that the shorter formats cannot.You are likely to notice, first, the greater seriousness and commitment that the players bring to the Test arena. And, in time, you will find that Tests varied and lifelike pace make not only for greater enjoyment in the moment, but also the indelible memories that form the psyche of the sports fan; the memories that T20, in particular, struggles to create.To choose between Tests and T20 is to ask ourselves what we want from sport, and from entertainment. At an IPL match, the action on the field is made to compete with many other forms of show- bat and ball is only one act in the vaudeville. It is an approach that speaks to a lack of confidence in the ability of cricket itself to entertain. Sometimes- as with the demand that players speak to the commentators while batting, bowling or fielding- the entertainment openly undermines the sport.At a Test match, by contrast, even in the fan-friendly stadia of England and Australia, there are no sideshows, no mid-over diversions. There is only cricket. And it is perhaps only by watching Tests that one can truly answer the question: why watch cricket at all, over all the other sports out there? Every sport has a set of qualities that go beyond its rules or equipment that make it unique. Take crickets two most popular global peers. Football is marked by its sheer simplicity, by its democratic spirit, and by its production of indelible moments, most of them short enough for a Vine. Basketball is a choreographed show of improbable athleticism, a ballet performed by decathletes.To ask what makes cricket different from other sports is to ask, what makes cricket cricket? More than anything it is its pace. In its slow movements Test cricket offers the illusions of stillness and eternity: at other times it is far more anxiety-provoking than the shorter formats, with their rigid structures and guarantees of impending release. At the end of a good Test match- never mind a great one- the fan who watched every ball is left with a weary emptiness, a sense that the preceding days contained all of life within them. Imagine how the players feel! The famous photograph of Brett Lee and Andrew Flintoff at Edgbaston in 2005 gives some sense of it. On this count, no other sport can compare.Culture doesnt only move forward. The same generation that abandoned newspapers and DVDs has led the renaissance of vinyl, a format deemed anachronistic three decades ago. Physical books, too, have survived many obituaries. To an extent, Tests is like sarod music, or lyric poetry, or the tiger- worth conserving because they are beautiful, and because life would be less worth living without them. But conserving Tests is best done by not restricting their pleasures to a few. Far from being out of tune with my generation, Test cricket, at its best, may be ideally suited to it. The cricketing world is divided between those that love Tests, and those that could if they were given the chance.Keshava Guha, 25, is a Bengaluru-based writer of fiction and of literary and political journalism. He has been a fan of Test cricket for two decades, and his optimism about its future is grounded in the fact that, as a long-suffering supporter of Arsenal FC, he knows a lost cause when he sees one. ' ' '