There was no internet back then and people then followed cricket on radio and discussed cricket verbally, so such scrutiny was not there.
As far as Sri Lanka are concerned they played A matches for a long time with other teams and they were quite competitive in these matches. In addition they used to play against Tamilnadu Ranji team in an annual match for what was called as M.J.Gopalan trophy. When they got their test status, no one questioned it to the best of my knowledge because they were widely acknowledged to be the strongest associate member of ICC and were considered ripe for test status.
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