Gilchrist wants T20 in Olympic Games

Adam Gilchrist has called for a dramatic decrease in the number of Tests agency a move he believes bequeath accumulate the five - day organization in the face of the Twenty20 challenge. While delivering the Cowdrey Lecture at Spirit ' s on Wednesday, Gilchrist oral Tests were the " most impractical vehicle to use " when trying to foster the game globally also he towering his skirmish for the expansion of Twenty20, along with a call to include cricket in the Olympics

" To deposit [Test cricket ' s] future, which we must - less is in fact deeper - we should energy back to the future where finished were fewer Test matches, but a lot more grave ones, " Gilchrist said. " And longitude the best cricketers of the turn played closer to 50 Tests in their career, not 150. "

Despite want a pick of the five - day voyage, Gilchrist uttered Tests should be tampered with " as teeny now possible ". " Its rules, customs and playing conditions - like Major League Baseball - should remain as close to how it has been played for the gone 130 dotage, " he said. " Many of cricket ' s innovations should be applied solitary in the shorter forms of the game. This not only includes the expanded umpire referral system, but especially the mooted spring of night Test cricket and a contrastive coloured ball imperative to sleep this. "

Gilchrist, who captained Deccan Chargers to the IPL trophy sway May, does not believe Twenty20, which he wants in the Olympics, answers all of cricket ' s problems. " Whilst I now enjoy and enjoy playing and watching T20 cricket - especially after captaining the Deccan Chargers to the 2009 IPL title - I am at emotions a traditionalist, who firmly believes that Test cricket is the ultimate test of a player ' s and team ' s ability, " he verbal. " This is not to say that T20 isn ' t a adept game. It positively is.

" For all their similarities, T20 still requires many contradistinctive strength sets from the longer forms of the game. The fact that some very well credentialed Test cricketers hold struggled to transform to the game, whilst others who will probably never come clode to playing Test cricket own thrived mark T20 - is surely existence enough. "

Gilchrist spent considerable time power laying outer his reasons due to cricket ' s inclusion network the Olympics. " The otherwise tough way to an act the game globally, " said Gilchrist, " is considering the ICC to actively dig into its inclusion owing to an Olympic sport.

" Invisible waver, the Olympic force provides one of the mightily efficient and rate effective distribution networks for characteristic sports to spread their wings globally. It would be difficult to see a superior, quicker or cheaper way of spreading the game throughout the cosmos.

" The Olympic movement ' s only remaining dead pocket fix the world happens to coincide stifle cricket ' s strongest - the subcontinent, " said Gilchrist. " This region, which includes India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka besides Bangladesh, represents just over individual fifth of the world ' s population. But shroud the exception of their great hockey teams of the past, these cricket powerhouses keep admitted barely a handful of Olympic medals in nearly 100 dotage of competition.

" What better way for the IOC to arrangement the Olympic brand further ideals into this region, than on the back of T20 cricket? The honours now both the ICC again IOC acceptance this appropriate would be enormous."