Legendary India captain Kapil Dev has raised doubts over the future of cricket as he feels that franchise leagues might dominate the international calendar. Kapil wants the International Cricket Council to take responsibility and find a solution regarding the management of the game. The rise of Indian Premier League has tempted other cricket boards to start their own franchise leagues as UAE and South Africa have already announced their own T20 cricket leagues where several big names of international cricket will participate.
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India’s 1983 World Cup-winning skipper Dev raised some big questions and said that cricket is going the football way.
“I think it’s fading out. The ICC [International Cricket Council] has a bigger responsibility how to manage this game. It’s going the way as football in Europe. They don’t play against each country. It is once in four years [during the World Cup]. Is this what we’re going to have, the World Cup and the rest of the time playing club [T20 franchise] cricket?" Kapil told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Several former cricketers including Ravi Shastri also talked about the same thing in the past and said cricket might follow the football footsteps where they usually play club games throughout the year and clash against each other mostly in multi-national tournaments.
While Dev said that the ICC has to take major steps to ensure the survival of 50-over and Test formats.
“In a similar way, will cricketers eventually be playing mainly the IPL or the Big Bash or something like that? So the ICC have to put more time into that to see how they can ensure the survival of one-day cricket, Test match cricket, not only club cricket," Kapil added.
However, the legendary captain is not totally against club cricket but said that new franchise leagues (UAE and South Africa) will affect the international calendar.
“Club cricket is ok for a while. The Big Bash is ok. But the South African league is coming, the UAE league is coming. If all the countries are going to play the club cricket, then international cricket will be only for the World Cup," he said.
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