Sachin Tendulkar speaks on how Test cricket should change, to attract more viewers

What's the story

The world of cricket has often sought the words of wisdom and advice from its greatest achievers, the latest of such an incident being one from Master himself - Sachin Tendulkar. As India waged a futile war against England at Lord's, Sachin spoke on how felt the need for Test cricket to change, to become more acceptable to fans from the present era.

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Sachin was in attendance at the Lord's Test, as he was also the distinguished chief guest invited to ring the traditional "Lord's Bell" before play was supposed to begin on Day 1. But, the entire day was washed out without a ball being bowled.

The rains continued for a major part of Day 2 and Day 4 as well, but that was all the time England needed, to seal the game in their favour. Both teams batted out a combined tally of just nearly 171 overs - effectively two full days of a Test match.

The details

Sachin spoke in an interview with icc-cricket.com, wherein he spoke on his belief that Test cricket should challenge batsmen more in order to keep the format interesting for the viewing. He observed that while bowlers perform under pressure in the shorter forms of the sport, the question of whether batsmen are being tested enough remains a debatable question red-ball cricket.

“The key ingredient of Test cricket is the surface that we play on, when you keep flat, dead surfaces, where the bowler thinks, ‘I have no chance, I’m going to stick to my channel’, and the batter thinks, okay, on this surface if I don’t do anything foolish, I (won’t) be out,’ that game is becoming boring, it’s becoming dull,” Tendulkar explained.

India's greatest batsman reminisced on his own times while dishing out examples to prove his point. He had batted across various kinds of surfaces all over the world - be it the subcontinent, the wacky pace-and-pounce favouring Australian and West Indies pitches, the South African pitches with too many traps all across the surface, and so on. The variations in surfaces according to Tendulkar helped him focus on his game whilst not being bothered by how the ball may react. According to him, that should be the challenge for batsmen of the current era as well.

What's next

The next England-India Test slated to begin at Trent Bridge on August 18, Saturday, is the third Test of the series. With three more games remaining, India needs to win all of those to stake a claim in the series. But prior to that, they may also have to discover and address several problems affecting the squad's poor performance in the series so far.