IND vs SA | Totally support having maximum of five Test centres in India, asserts Virat Kohli
Concerned about the turn up at the stadiums during matches, skipper Virat Kohli has supported the idea of five having Test strongholds around the country like other nations. Not only that, the Indian captain believes that this structure will help the opponents be accustomed to the away conditions.
With an emphatic win in Ranchi, India has cleansweeped the Test series but BCCI still faces grave a question. While both Vizag and Pune had decent crowds on the weekends but Ranji was sparsely populated thought the five days.
Although Indians are pretty fond Test cricket the turn up at matches is very disappointing. Following the series, the resounding question was if Test cricket should only be played where people come to witness in large numbers or should BCCI continue to rotate between state associations. Answering it, skipper Virat Kohli suggested having Test strongholds in the country.
"Look, you want to keep Test cricket alive and exciting, I totally agree with the fact that we should have five Test centres at max. It can't be sporadic and spread over so many places where people turn up or they don't," Cricbuzz quoted Kohli. "We have been discussing this for a long time now, and in my opinion we should have five Test centres. Period."
This policy has been adopted by other countries like England, Australia, South Africa and even our neighbour Sri Lanka, all of them have well-established venues where they play Tests. Kohli opined that knowing the locations and conditions beforehand has a charm and challenge of its own.
"Teams coming to India should know that we are going to play at these five centers, these are the pitches we should expect, these are the kind of people who will come to watch... crowds. That becomes a challenge already when you're leaving the shores. Because we go to any place, we know we have four Test matches at these venues, this is what the pitches are going to do, it is going to be full stadium, the crowd behind the team," Kohli said.
BCCI has 28 Test centres all across the country and is planning to add more to take Test cricket to the smaller cities but the move is clearly not paying off. Kohli also suggested that the rotation system should only be limited to limited-overs matches but that means BCCI will have to make major changes in its marketing strategies and it might very well be in the cards with the new BCCI president Sourav Ganguly taking charge on October 23.
"I agree that state associations, rotation and giving games and all that -- that is fine for T20s and One-Day cricket. Teams coming to India should know this is where we are going to play."
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