Former India head coach Ravi Shastri gave a suggestion to save Test cricket’s future as he referred to the football model and said cricket will follow the same in future. The emergence of T20 cricket has cast doubts over the future of Test and ODI formats. The franchise league especially the Indian Premier League has grown massively in recent years as several players also prefer playing in T20 tournaments over international cricket.
Shastri has provided a unique solution to save red-ball cricket from extinction as he said that only the top six teams should play Tests against each other to give the format some boost.
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“You cannot have 12 teams or ten teams. You keep the top six, keep the quality and respect quality over quantity. That’s the only way you open a window for other cricket to be played. Expand teams in one-day cricket and T20 cricket if you want the game to spread. But Test cricket will have to reduce the number of teams that play,” Shastri said while commentating for Sky Sports.
Shastri feels that the franchise leagues will be more significant in future like football and the international teams will face each other only in World Cup events.
“The bottom line, it’s the football model. You’ve got the EPL, La Liga, the German league, the South America Copa America. In the future it’s going to be like that, you’ll have one World Cup, the big one and then the rest of it will be all different leagues happening around the world,” said Shastri.
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Shastri further elaborated his idea of ‘quality over quantity and said there should be a qualification benchmark which every team have to follow to play Test cricket.
“Whether it’s India, Australia or England you have to qualify for red-ball series if you want to be around to play Test match cricket.”
“Then it doesn’t matter if England doesn’t go to the West Indies, or West Indies come to England. If they’re in the top six, they play, but if they’re not in the top six they don’t play,” said Shastri.
Meanwhile, others present in the commentary box didn’t agree with Shastri’s words and countered them by asking if it would be counterproductive to the game. Shastri asserted that if the opposition doesn’t have the same quality then the superior team will finish the game in two or three days which is not good for the broadcasters who paid for five days to get the rights.
“Absolutely. Because what is Test cricket? It tests you and for that you need quality. If there’s no quality then who’s going to watch it? You’re going to have three-day games, two-day games if the opposition is not right. If you have countries who have never played Test cricket and then you say ‘come to India’ or ‘come to England’, in bowler-friendly conditions the game’s over in two days, two-and-a-half days. And you’ve taken money from the broadcaster for five days. So he’s going to be unhappy, the fans are going to be unhappy and the standard is going to go down.”
“Quality is important and in that format of the game extremely important for cricket to survive in the future,” said Shastri.
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