Live Score
Cricket Teams
Cricket Players‘Don’t remember a single match in last 6-7 years as coach of India': Shastri bats for radical change in cricket calendar
Former India head coach Ravi Shastri has said that T20 internationals can be limited to only the World Cup and that way one can have longer seasons of the IPL.
The 2022 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) ended with Gujarat Titans becoming champions after a whopping 74 games were played in total. The addition of the two new teams, both of whom were involved in the latter stages of the tournament and one of whom went on to win it, did not lead to a longer season this year because of a different format but is the number of matches are likely to increase from the next year onwards. Keeping this point in mind, former India head coach Ravi Shastri has said that the IPL may get longer still and bilateral T20 cricket can be done away with.
“That is the future. The NFL can go on for seven or eight months of the year, the IPL is not far behind. You will have to break it up. Give a break to the player and come back in a new corridor (in the cricket calendar). Tomorrow there could be 140 games split 70-70, two seasons (in the same year), you never know,” said Shastri on ESPNCricinfo.
Also Read | ‘Umpires offered walkout. I said we’re here to play, not sit in dressing room'
Shastri was one of the pundits for Star Sports in the IPL and returned to the commentator's box for the first time since taking over as India's head coach in late 2017 for the final.
“That is the way it is going to go, that is the way it has developed. You might think it's overdose, but nothing is overdose in India. I have been seeing how people have watched (the tournament) these last two months, especially in these post-Covid times, and they are loving every bit of it. They are almost having withdrawal symptoms after it all got over, that they can't have their usual scenes after 7'o'clock in the evening,” said Shastri.
Also Read | ‘Hope followers increased’: Pollard slams Ex-India player, then deletes tweet
Shastri had said during his tenure as head coach that bilateral T20 cricket can be done away with. He reiterated that T20s should be played internationally only in the T20 World Cup.
“There is too much of bilateral stuff going on in T20. I have said that even when I was the coach of India, I could see it happening in front of my eyes. It should go the football way, where you just play the World Cup. No one remembers bilateral matches. I don't remember a single game in the last six-seven years as coach of India. If the team remembers the World Cup, they will remember it. Unfortunately we didn't, so I don't remember that either. But where I am coming from is, you play franchise cricket around the world, each country has its own franchise tournament. And then, every two years, you come and play a World Cup. Pick you teams from there and play a World Cup,” he said.
