Protect Test cricket, says India's Dravid
Indian batting great Rahul Dravid has urged administrators to cut
"meaningless" one-day cricket matches and work harder to win back fans
to Tests, which he said remain the "gold standard" for players.
Dravid also cautioned against the menace of match-fixing while
delivering the Sir Donald Bradman Oration at the Australian War Memorial
in Canberra on Wednesday night.
"Cricket must find a middle path," he said. "It must scale down this
mad merry-go-round that teams and players find themselves in - heading
off for two-Test tours and seven-match ODI series with a few Twenty20s
thrown in."
Dravid, the first foreign player to deliver the commemorative
lecture, said finding the right balance between the three formats was
the biggest challenge for officials.
"Test cricket is the gold standard, it is the form the players want
to play," the top-order batsman said, ahead of a four-Test series
between India and Australia starting in Melbourne on December 26.
"It deserves to be protected, it is what the world's best know they
will be judged by.
"We may not fill 65,000 capacity stadiums for Test matches, but we
must actively fight to get as many as we can in, to create a Test match
environment that the players and the fans feed off.
"Anything, but the sight of Tests played on empty grounds. For that,
we have got to play Test cricket that people can watch."
Dravid said playing day-night Tests was a viable option.
"I don't think day-night Tests or a Test championship should be
dismissed. "In March last year, I played a day-night first-class game in
Abu Dhabi for the MCC and my experience from that was that day-night
Tests is an idea seriously worth exploring.
"There may be some challenges in places where there is dew but the
visibility and durability of the pink cricket ball was not an issue."
Dwelling on the surfeit of ODI cricket, Dravid said the absence of
crowds at India's home one-dayers against England in October should
serve as a wake-up call for administrators.
"Since about, I think 1985, people have been saying that there is too
much meaningless one-day cricket," he said. "Maybe it's finally time to
do something about it.
"The India v England one-day series had no context, because the two
countries had played each other in four Tests and five ODIs just a few
weeks before.
"When India and the West Indies played one-dayers a month after that,
the grounds were full, but this time matches were played in smaller
venues that didn't host too much international cricket.
"Maybe our clues are all there and we must remain vigilant."
Following the Pakistan corruption scandal that rocked the sport this
year, Dravid added that cricketers must be willing to give up "a little
bit of freedom of movement and privacy" if it helped keep the game free
of cheating.
"Dope tests, the possible scrutiny of finances, or even lie-detector
tests may be necessary measures to keep the sport clean," he said,
warning that players would have to sacrifice some privacy to stay ahead
of the cheats.
"Cricket's financial success means it will face threats from outside
the game and keep facing them," Dravid added. "The Internet and modern
technology may just end up being a step ahead of every anti-corruption
regulation in place in the game."
Dravid, who made his international debut in 1996, has scored 13,094
runs in 160 Tests at an average of 53.22 with 36 centuries.
He also has 10,889 runs from 344 one-dayers at 39.16 with 12
hundreds. SYDNEY, AFP |