Day-Night Test cricket will certainly bring in the crowds, believes Anil Kumble
The senior players of Indian cricket are worried about the ever-diminishing fame of Test cricket and former captain Anil Kumble is no exception. He backed Kohli’s idea of Test strongholds while advising BCCI to have Tests in specific places on specific occasions and backing day-night Test cricket.
Former Indian captain Anil Kumble has come forward to back skipper Virat Kohli’s proposal to have Test strongholds around the country. Jumbo believes that by doing so, it will be easy to market Test Cricket and hence will be easier to attract the crowd.
Kumble also went to urge the BCCI to revert back to the policy of the 80s and 90s where Test matches were played at specific locations during specific festivities as it worked well back then.
"I think that has certainly been one of the ways of promoting Test cricket. By restricting it to few centres and not just that it is also important to choose the time of the Test match," Kumble was quoted as saying by CricketNext.
"We all remember that in the festival time, during the festival of Pongal, the Test match used to happen in Chennai. And the start of the season used to be in Delhi, Bangalore would have a Test match, Mumbai would have a Test match, Kolkata of course."
The question, how can we attract people towards Test cricket, was sparked when the stands in Ranchi during the third Test match of the Freedom series between India and South Africa were scarcely populated throughout the match. Answering it Kohli came up with the proposal of five permanent Test centres. Kumble backing this idea also talked about the importance of an energetic crowd during a Test match.
"I think it is important for Test cricket to promote these centres where people would know that these are the centres where you are going to play Test match cricket in prior to the start of the season so that you can market Test cricket and you can make sure that the crowd come in.
"When I was the coach, I think we played in six different centres, they were all new centres and the one centre it was packed was Indore. And the atmosphere was brilliant, it is in the heart of the city that was one of the reasons that the crowd could come in irrespective of the time of the day," Kumble added.
The 49-year-old also supported the idea of India playing day and night Test matches as he believes that this might very well be crowd puller as people are now bored of the classical Test matches.
"I think day-night Test cricket will certainly bring in the crowds towards the latter half of the game."
"You also need to choose the right time of the year because we've seen in day-night ODIs, the ball gets really wet because of due. So, you may have to choose the venue and time of the year," he added before signing off.
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