Mark Taylor Calls For 4-Day Tests, Says 'It Allows The Captain To Be More Adventurous'
Mark Taylor backed the idea of 4-Day Tests and said that it allows the captain to be more adventurous.
New Delhi: Former Australia captain Mark Taylor has backed the idea of playing 4-Day Tests to save the future of the format. Taylor believes that 4-Day Test matches allow the captain to be more adventurous.
Test matches today rarely last five days. The mindset of the players has changed and the fans and players want the game to move forward at a fast pace. England have set a template for teams on how they can make Test cricket interesting and a 4-Day Test might just be the spice needed to revive the format.
"I think cricket should move with the times and bring in four-day Test matches. I think it just works better. Players like to have three days off between games, so four-day Test matches work. You play something like Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, or Friday to Monday, then three days off and then you can do it all again. So, I think it works well and it also puts the onus on skippers to be a little bit more adventurous at times."
Taylor further added that 5-Day Tests are boring and nobody wants to see teams playing draws after scoring 500 runs.
"Loose a bit of time, get a really flat pitch - well declare earlier. We don't need to see 500 runs scored every innings. The best games of cricket have always been where a side makes about 350 and the second side does the same and then you've got a really good contest."
Meanwhile, the ongoing series between India and Australia have seen matches ending inside three days. The pitches on offer has been under the scanner owing to them being too spin friendly which has made the batters struggle to score. ICC recently termed the pitch for the third Test in Indore as poor. Mark Taylor also slammed the Indore pitch and said the pitches shouldn't explode from ball one.
"It was very poor. I think that was a very kind conclusion drawn by the ICC. When you go to India you expect to play on low, slow turning pitches - that's been the case for as long as I've known the game of cricket and there's nothing wrong with that. It's the way you expect to play in India. But you don't expect the ball to go through the surface of the pitch on day one and that's what happened."
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