Former India captain Kapil Dev has asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to take steps to protect the Test and one-day international formats in the face of the global proliferation of lucrative domestic Twenty20 tournaments.
T20 leagues have added to cricket’s already packed calendar, with new competitions set to debut in the United Arab Emirates and South Africa early next year.
The pioneering Indian Premier League is anticipated to have a longer window in the ICC’s next international calendar, while England and Australia are also expected to get dedicated windows for their respective franchise-based leagues.
Due to the tight schedule, numerous players have withdrawn from formats, notably England’s Ben Stokes, who withdrew from ODIs last month, and South Africa, which cancelled a trip to Australia in January because it clashed with the start of its T20 league.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has put the onus on member boards to establish a balance between domestic and bilateral cricket in order to better manage player workloads, but Dev feels the ICC has a “bigger role” to regulate the sport.
“It’s going the way of European football,” Dev said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. “They don’t compete with one another.” It occurs every four years (during the World Cup).
“Will we have the World Cup and then play club (T20 franchise) cricket for the rest of the time?” Will cricketers one day primarily compete in the IPL, the Big Bash League, or something similar?
“The ICC has to spend more time looking into how they can safeguard the future of one-day cricket, Test match cricket, and not only club cricket,” said Dev, who captained India to World Cup victory in 1983.
