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Pink ball cricket can’t be Test’s future: Kohli
KOLKATA, Nov 21, 2019 (BSS)- While the day-night Test between Bangladesh and India created a huge enthusiasm amongst the people and even the organizers, Indian skipper Virat Kohli said that no one can purely make Test cricket based on just entertaining people.
Having said that he believes, pink ball cricket can’t be the future of Test cricket as the longer version format of late has failed to attract the people into the ground.
”I don’t think so [pink ball cricket is the future of Test cricket],” Kohli said here on Thursday ahead of India’s first ever pink ball cricket, which they would play against Bangladesh. For the Bangladesh, it would also be their maiden day-night appearance.
Kohli’s judgement was purely based on the cricketing reason that as to why the pink ball cricket shouldn’t be Test cricket’s future.
”I don’t think this can become the future of Test cricket in my opinion, this should not become the only way Test cricket is played because then you’re losing that nervousness in the first session in the morning,” Kohli said.
”Yes, you can bring excitement into Test cricket but you can’t purely make Test cricket based on just entertaining people. You know the entertainment of Test cricket lies in the fact that a batsman is trying to survive a session and a bowler is trying to get a batsman out, and if people don’t respond to that, too bad.
“Whoever wants to respond to that will come and watch Test cricket? If I don’t like Test cricket, you can’t push me to like Test cricket,” he said.
Cricket organizers are trying to rebrand Test cricket in order to make it commercially viable and therefore they opted for day-night Test that is played with pink ball.
It is expected to gather more crowds in Test as they are likely to be entertained in a better way under the flood lights.
India’s decision to welcome the idea of a D/N Test under BCCI president Sourav Ganguly is a departure from their previous skepticism of the concept. BCCI had been invited to play a pink-ball Test in Adelaide by Cricket Australia on their 2018-19 tour, but had turned it down citing lack of practice.
As India decided to play pink ball Test match many believe that it [pink-ball] is going to be the next big thing in cricket in the coming days.
‘If someone gets an excitement or a boost from watching that battle between bat and ball and a great session of Test cricket, in my opinion, those are the people that should come and watch Test cricket. Because they understand what’s going on. Yes it is great to create a buzz around Test cricket, the first three-four days here are sold out, which is amazing,” he said.
”But I think Rahul bhai mentioned this recently that if we have a Test calendar, where the series and the Tests are fixed then obviously it’ll bring a lot more system and sync into people planning their calendars as well. It can’t be random, saying you never know when a Test is going to arrive,” he said.
Kohli also gave a recipe as to how they could make the Test cricket entertaining.
”If you have centers marked and you have Test calendars marked then obviously people will have an idea of as to how to plan to get to those Tests – people are not going to leave their work and come to a Test match if they don’t know what’s going on.
“They can plan in advance, like you plan for anything in life. So I think this can be a one-off thing, It should not in my opinion become a regular thing,” he concluded.
BSS/SMP/SMM/1635 hrs