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Originally Posted by Raynman
I don't believe that T20 will be the cause of the death Test cricket as will the genuine stubbornness and the lack of foresight to rectify the issues by the ICC and the journalist/fans that refuse to acknowledge that changes are needed to Test cricket.
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Changes are eminent and being implemented. Recently, ICC proposed reducing the test length to four days, suggested the use of pink balls and are aggressively trying to make it a day night event. Test cricket will lose out not because of lack of effort on the cricket administrators part rather the money generated by shortest format is too great of a quantity for them to concern themselves with preserving a traditional format that cannot bring in as much profit in five long days. Financially, it makes sense for the boards to reduce a test match or two in a series to substitute them with 20/20s to boost up the profits moreover, the players will never complain. Many fast bowlers have already expressed their preference for the shortest format seeing that they only have to bowl four overs.
The future of cricket is here and it is undoubtedly 20/20. I can suggest many solutions to modernize longer version of cricket:
1) Give first class cricket test tatus or equivalent status and have a first class season of IPL as well (free entrance to first class cricket games).
2) Reduce the number of international cricket games and adopt a model of central profit generating league format like the EPL, NFL, NBA, NHL, etc with 20-25 teams.
3) Toughen up first class cricket by making the pitches more bowling friendly and giving the bowlers freedom to bowl as many bouncers they want in an over so that bowlers will feel they are "not getting paid to get hit".
4) Introduce a world cup of test cricket (every 2 years) where there is no draws.
5) Penalize teams for scoring at rate lower than 5.
6) Make it similar to baseball and have them play 4 innings game (4 innings of 50 overs).
I realize that these wholesale changes will change the core-concept of test match and you could argue that it would be better then to just scrap it off the ICC calender in which case you would right but I think these changes are necessary to preserve even a shadow of test cricket given the lust for 20/20 and spectators' appetite for maximum entertainment in shortest possible time. Besides, Bangladesh can compete well in this type of format.