Pune: India spinner Kuldeep Yadav and Sri Lanka coach Mickey Arthur on Thursday voiced their support to keep Test matches a five-day affair, saying reducing it to four will amount to “messing up” with the fabric of the longest format.
Arthur, who has also coached South Africa, Australia and most recently Pakistan, joined his ICC Cricket Committee colleague Mahela Jayawardene in supporting five-day Tests. “Look, five-day Test cricket is the way to go (forward). Test cricket challenges you mentally, physically and technically and a lot of a time on the fifth day (a result comes).
We just witnessed a very good Test match (England versus South Africa) that finished on day five,” Arthur said ahead of the third T20 here on Friday. “I know, we can talk about financial pressures and that type of stuff. I think the fabric of Test cricket should not be messed (up) with.
You want wickets deteriorating on day five, you want (situations) where there is lot of really good exciting draws,” Arthur added. Kuldeep too feels the existing format should not be tinkered with. “To be very honest, I would prefer five-day Test cricket. Test cricket is made for five days and I would not like to see any change in it. Something which is classic should be kept as it is,” he added. The cricket Committee, led by Anil Kumble, will discuss the four-day Test proposal in the next round of the ICC meetings, to held in Dubai from March 27-31. Cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar, India skipper Virat Kohli have also opposed the idea of four-day Tests.
On the other hand, Arthur doesn’t doubt their skills but newly-appointed coach Mickey Arthur feels education on various aspects of the game is the need of the hour for Sri Lankan cricketers.
Arthur, who was appointed as Sri Lanka coach in December last year, on Thursday said the Lankan players need to work on small aspects of the game like match management, game plan and strategy ahead of the ICC T20 World Cup to be held in Australia later this year. “We have got a set of players who are very skilled and we just need to educate them a little bit in terms of game plans, strategy and match management.
We need to make them understand when to take risks and when not,” Arthur said on Thursday ahead of Friday’s third and final T20 International against India here.
“We are working hard on rotating strikes. Those are the little things we are working on. After every outing we need to get better and better and in eight months time we have to be competing (in T20 World Cup),” he added. (PTI)
