Most international cricketers want Test matches to remain the sport’s priority and believe the Twenty20 boom will affect the one-day game more than Test cricket, a survey has found.
The Federation International Cricketers’ Associations (Fica) survey targeted 105 players and received 64 responses.
Eighty-six percent rated traditional Test cricket as the most important form, significantly ahead of the World Cup, while 98% wanted Test cricket to maintain its premier status.
The growing influence of Twenty20 cricket, first played in England to attract young fans and transformed into a money-spinner in India, is set to create a new world order for the once-leisurely sport.
World cricket chiefs are meeting in Dubai this weekend hoping to safeguard the game’s future amid a lucrative Twenty20 revolution fuelled by the sport’s economic powerhouse, India.
The survey also found 60% of players want a Test championship, and 95% believe the International Cricket Council (ICC) should schedule a window in the calendar to allow players to participate in club competitions.
Forty percent of respondents said the grind of international cricket would force them to retire early.
Fica chief executive Tim May said it was clear from its survey that players believe Twenty 20 cricket will form an important part of the future.
”At the same time, it is clear that the players want to be able to protect Test cricket as the lead format of the game,” May said.
”It is also evident that today’s player is less likely to be loyal to commitments to his home cricket board, as cricket’s employment market is freed from the power of governing bodies,” he said.
”Simply, the freeing up of the market and the lifting of the citizenship barriers has resulted in more market-driven values for players, and the players, not surprisingly, are gravitating to that market.
”The players and Fica feel very strongly that to preserve a healthy balance between club/franchise cricket and international cricket, that the ICC needs to create a window in its international programming.”
May said without such a window international cricket would be weakened, raising the possibility of it becoming ”a declining product in cricket’s future landscape.”
Players from non-Fica members — India, Pakistan and Zimbabwe — were not surveyed, it said. — Sapa-AFP