T20 cricket shouldn't be played at international level, feels Graeme Smith

While most of the cricket experts and former cricketers pondering over the future of Test cricket South African icon Graeme Smith has suggested the ICC to keep T20 cricket in franchise level rather than international level and invest in the marketing of Test Cricket. He also came up with a plan to organize 50 over World Cup in two years.

"I am a big believer that T20 cricket shouldn't be played at international level. Maybe have a World Cup every couple of years but it should be largely a domestic-based format," the former South African captain said at an event in Mumbai on Wednesday, as reported by TOI.

"Test cricket needs some context, how they get there I don't know. They need to invest in marketing that game a little bit better. So much money nowadays go into marketing the T20 game and rightly so because it's an amazing concept.”

Smith, who is the second-highest run-getter after Jacques Kallis for South Africa has also suggested that the ICC should consider splitting the year cricket calendar into two halves.

"The ICC needs to sit down and work on a way forward for cricket. Maybe there should be six months a year that's just domestic T20 cricket and six months is international cricket. These things need to be debated because I don't think in the current system everything can survive,” said the 37-year-old.

Highlighting the amount of money ICC spent on promoting T20 cricket across the globe, Smith advised ICC to come up with similar kind of marketing strategy for the longer formats of the game. The same thing, which was suggested by Gautam Gambhir before a week.

“There needs to be an investment. Maybe spend more money marketing Test cricket. So much money is spent in marketing the T20 format. Maybe there can be money marketing the stories and histories in Test cricket,” he said.

"What's great for the game is someone like Virat Kohli who wants to do well in Test cricket and be successful and set standard for everyone else. As long as people like him consider Test cricket valuable, it's important for the rest of the world," he concluded.