“It’s going the way as football in Europe”- Kapil Dev urges ICC to ensure the survival of ODI and Test cricket

“It’s going the way as football in Europe”- Kapil Dev urges ICC to ensure the survival of ODI and Test cricket

Kapil Dev

Former India captain Kapil Dev has urged the cricket’s governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC) to take steps to protect formats like Tests and ODIs amid the lucrative T20 competitions and global league tournaments.

New T20 leagues, in South Africa and in UAE will commence from next year. The Indian Premier League will also be given an extended window in the ICC’s next calender. Australia’s Big Bash League and England’s The Hundred will also get an extended window.

Now, several memebers of the cricket fraternity have shown their concern over how drastically cricket is changing. Current players are retiring from one format in order to prevent fatigue and ensure their giving hundred percent in the formats they’ll play.

The cramped schedule doesn’t have many breaks and this made England Test captain Ben Stokes bidding goodbye to ODIs last month. It was after Stokes’ restirement from ODIs that started the discussion of the future of the longer formats.

“We are not cars,” the 31-year-old told BBC Test Match Special. “You can’t just fill us up and we’ll go out there and be ready to be fuelled up again. We had a Test series and then the one-day team had a series going on at the same time – that was a bit silly.”

“I just feel like there is too much cricket rammed in for people to play all three formats now. It is a lot harder than it used to be. I look back to when I used to do all three and it didn’t feel like it was as jam-packed and all that,” added the England Talisman.

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“Is this what we’re going to have, the World Cup and the rest of the time playing club cricket?”- Kapil Dev

Kapil Dev
Kapil Dev

ICC’s member boards are responsible to find a balance between domestic and bilateral cricket to manage better workload of the players. But Kapil Dev feels it’s not enough and that ICC has a “bigger responsibility”.

“It’s going the way as football in Europe,” Dev told the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. “They don’t play against each country. It is once in four years (during the World Cup).

“Is this what we’re going to have, the World Cup and the rest of the time playing club (T20 franchise) cricket? In a similar way, will cricketers eventually be playing mainly the IPL or the Big Bash or something like that?

“The ICC have to put more time into that to see how they can ensure the survival of one-day cricket, test match cricket, not only club cricket,” added Dev.

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