Pakistan cricketer, Younis Khan joined the bandwagon of those who have been critical of the way India made the pitches for the Test series against South Africa. The Pakistani stalwart believed that the International Cricket Council (ICC) should take measures to ensure that pitches are made more fairly all across the world.
India dominated the four-match Test series by winning 3-0. Had the second Test in Bangalore not been affected by rain, India might have had a clean sweep. Spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja picked up 31 and 23 wickets respectively giving a clear indication of how spin-friendly the tracks were.
“I don't think it was good advertisement for Test cricket in the recent India and South Africa series that the ball was turning from the first day onwards. The element of competition disappears on such pitches,” Younis said.
The former Pakistan captain also believed that pitches in other parts of the world were not the same as what they were in the past. For instance, he mentioned about how pitches in Australia were not as pacy and bouncy as they were a decade ago. According to him, not all pitches in England assisted seam movement anymore.
T20 killing Test cricket, believes Younis
After recently having retired from the ODI format, Younis felt that the shortest format of the game – T20 – was making Test cricket less popular to the cricket fans. He expressed concern over the number of players who spent more time focusing on playing in T20 leagues rather than trying to get into their national squads.
“T20 cricket has been a big step forward for cricket but, unfortunately, it has been allowed unsupervised growth and that has had negative effects on the players many of whom now just think that just play T20 leagues and earn well.
“Nowadays there are T20 leagues being played everywhere but the quality and big money is there only in IPL or perhaps the Big Bash. With so many leagues round the year, players are only focusing on this format and it is not good for Test or ODI cricket,” Younis said.
Younis suggested that the reason that number of quality players coming through the ranks in cricket were less because of the emergence of T20 cricket on a major scale.
The Pakistani veteran clarified that he had not signed a contract with the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in order to be considered for the Pakistan Super League (PSL). Younis was one of the many surprise exclusions in the PSL drafts that were held on Monday and Tuesday.
Younis stressed the importance of the new T20 league being transparent from the beginning in order to avoid match-fixing issues that have marred the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL).
“If the PSL is held properly in a transparent and clean manner than it would benefit our domestic players a lot. I want to see that happen. But transparency in everything is required so that our league doesn't face same problems we have seen in other countries,” he said.
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