Take action or see cricket going down the soccer way warns Kapil Dev
New Delhi: Former India captain Kapil Dev has called on cricket’s governing body, the ICC, to take steps to protect the Test and One Day International cricket formats amid the global growth of lucrative domestic T20 competitions. The growing dominance of T20 leagues has further strained cricket’s already cricketing calendar, with new T20 leagues in the United Arab Emirates and South Africa set to launch early next year.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is set to be given a huge window into the ICC’s next international cricketing calendar, while England and Australia are also likely to get dedicated slots for their domestic franchise-based leagues. In such a situation, the cricket schedule has become very busy and due to this some players have been forced to leave one format or the other.
England’s Ben Stokes quit one-day internationals last month, while South Africa canceled an ODI tour of Australia in January as it clashed with the launch of their T20 league.
The ICC has left it to the respective cricket boards to find a balance between domestic and bilateral cricket to better manage the players’ workload, but Kapil Dev said it is the responsibility of the ICC to manage the game. “It’s going like football in Europe. They don’t play against every country. It happens once in four years (during the World Cup),” Kapil Dev told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Captain Kapil Dev, who made the country a World Cup winner in 1983, said, “Are we going to play club (T20 franchise) cricket for the rest of the time in the World Cup? Similarly, will the cricketers end up mainly playing IPL or Big Bash or something like that? league?
