Rahul Dravid demands cricket revamp
Indian great Rahul Dravid has demanded administrators revamp the ad hoc approach to cricket scheduling or risk being responsible for the game’s demise.
Invited to deliver the annual Sir Donald Bradman Oration for 2011 at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Wednesday night, Dravid covered a range of issues but spoke strongly about how all three cricketing formats can be improved and preserved.
Dravid said that international cricket must better appreciate its fans, and must recognise that dwindling crowd numbers for Test and ODI matches is a sign that the current approach is broken.
At almost 39, the oldest man currently playing Test cricket described five-day matches as “the gold standard … the form the players want to play.”
He slammed cricketing bodies for the prevalence of meaningless “merry-go-round” tours that in his opinion, mean Test series are often too short and hold no context.
Dravid said if the tradition of five-day cricket is to survive as the pinnacle of the sport, revolutionary concepts like day-night Tests and a Test Championship must be pursued.
“In March of 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,” he told a packed audience in the ANZAC room of the Memorial.
“The visibility and durability of the pink cricket ball was not an issue.
“Similarly, a Test championship with every team and player driving themselves to be winners of a sought after title seems like it would have a context to every game.
“Every Test playing country (should) get its fair share of Tests and playing for a championship or a cup not just a ranking.”
There have been growing calls in cricket circles to scrap the 50-over format altogether, but Dravid said that approach was misguided.
He said one-day cricket was responsible for revolutionising areas of the game like strokeplay and fielding, but many fixtures had been largely pointless since 1995.
Dravid said the regularity in which ODIs are played must be drastically reduced so it returns to being a special event.
“The future may well lie in playing one-day internationals centred around ICC events, like the Champions Trophy and the World Cup. That would ensure that all 50-over matches would build up for those tournaments,” he said.
“Anything makes more sense than a seven-match ODI series.
“The fans have sent us a message and we must listen. Empty stands do not make for good television. Bad television can lead to a fall in ratings, the fall in ratings will be felt by media planners and (have) advertisers looking elsewhere.
“If that happens, it’s hard to see television rights around cricket being as sought after as they have always been in the past 15 years. And where does that leave everyone?
“I’m not trying to be a … doomsday prophet – that is just how I see it.”
Dravid said the overwhelming public support for Twenty20 cricket spoke for itself, but the shortest form should be restricted to “domestic competitions through official leagues which will make it financially attractive for cricketers … and also keep cricket viable in countries where it fights for space and attention.”
Touching on the spot-fixing scandals, Dravid backed Steve Waugh’s call for players to willingly submit to lie-detector tests, so the innocent are cleared and the fight against corruption is boosted.
© AAP 2013
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December 15th 2011 @ 7:41am
Justin said | December 15th 2011 @ 7:41am | Report comment
ODI series should never be more than 3 matches. Imagine the time that would be saved and we could have all Test series being 3 matches series where possible as a minimum.
December 15th 2011 @ 8:31am
Bayman said | December 15th 2011 @ 8:31am | Report comment
Rahul Dravid, the voice of sanity. A lone voice I fear but a voice nevertheless.
The problem has been the change in emphasis on the part of sponsors. Once, cricket was used as a vehicle to advertise their product. Now, those same sponsors are looking to get a return on their investment. In other words, they put money in but they expect to get money out to cover their input.
Hence, the farcical “public vote” on the Man of the Match in the Tests against New Zealand. CA, in this instance, has assisted the sponsors in their endevours by agreeing with the concept. Fortunately, it would seem that CA, under enormous pressure from the backlash of the public’s decision, has opted out of the arrangement for the next outing.
Once money, and not cricket, becomes the imperative then cricket, and cricketers, will suffer. As for the fans we can only hope to enjoy what is served up to us by our cricketing masters. Certainly, no consideration is given to the fans these days on any decision related to the game. Welcome to professional sport.
Greg Chappell once asked Sir Donald Bradman why he had refused the players requests for more money – which led, of course, to World Series Cricket. Bradman replied that he never thought of cricket as a professional career but more of a pasttime. Just a game to be played and enjoyed but not to stress over.
We see now that Bradman’s fears for the game have long come to fruition. It was probably inevitable given humans are always looking at “opportunities” to make money. Fractured schedules, meaningless games of any and all formats, massive salaries causing players to hang on and keep hanging on, cricket associations and national bodies employing dozens, or even hundreds, where a handfull was plenty in days gone by, empire building and rorting and all the while those involved developing an inflated opinion of their worth based purely on the salary they now earn (as opposed to their ability).
Greg Chappell, incidentally, now better understands what Bradman said to him all those years ago – as a player, of course, he understood a bit less so. Welcome to professional sport. The cat is now well and truly out of the bag and there’s not much any of us can do about it. The agenda has been hijacked and that agenda is money – pure and simple.
December 15th 2011 @ 8:44am
Brett McKay said | December 15th 2011 @ 8:44am | Report comment
Dravid’s full speech is available at http://www.cricket.com.au/news-display/Rahul-Dravids-Bradman-Oration/26409. It’s a great speech, full of everything a lot of people have been saying for years (he’s on my bandwagon of scrapping T20 Internationals), and it’s refreshing to hear it comnig from such a respected voice. Hopefully the powers that be were listening..
December 15th 2011 @ 6:59pm
Rhys said | December 15th 2011 @ 6:59pm | Report comment
It would be great to see players like Rahul Dravid and Ricky Ponting, who hold Test cricket in such high esteem, go on to hold senior adminstrative positions in the future – either with their respective countries boards, or the ICC. Sadly it seems most of the current administrative bodies, across all sporting endeavours, are driven primarily by maximising revenue.
December 15th 2011 @ 7:08pm
Red Kev said | December 15th 2011 @ 7:08pm | Report comment
I think given Ponting’s leadership and management experience in the Australian Cricket team and his current inability to face the reality that he’s not good enough to hold a position on merit – he’d be a disaster as an administrator.
December 15th 2011 @ 7:27pm
Rhys said | December 15th 2011 @ 7:27pm | Report comment
On reflection Red Kev, I think you’re right. I really didn’t think that one through enough.
December 16th 2011 @ 9:26am
John said | December 16th 2011 @ 9:26am | Report comment
Lie detectors are a joke. Aldrich Ames was a minor public servant with the CIA who drove flash cars, lived in a mansion and
generally lived the high life. The CIA never questioned where this lowly paid bureaucrat lived so well because he had passed two
polygraph tests. After the collapse of the USSR the CIA found that ten American spies had been captured and executed behind the Iron Curtain due to information fed to the Soviets by Ames. The CIA still uses “lie detectors” despite the US Government Expert Panel Enquiry on Polygraphs and Lie Detectors released a 398 page report in 2002 that found “National Security is too important to be left to such a blunt instrument” and “no spy has ever been caught by using the polygraph”.
Polygraphs depend on stress and people who lie all the time find no stress in not telling the truth. Waugh and Dravid watch too much television.