Protect Test cricket, says India’s Raul Dravid

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.” – AFP.