Irfan Pathan

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has recently brought the proposal of four-day Test match which the global body wants to test from 2023 through the World Test Championship. While many international cricketers are disagreeing with this fact, recently retired Indian all-rounder Irfan Pathan is looking in a different way.

While the popularity of Test cricket is going to downward continuously, ICC and big full-members are trying hard to revive this format. The ICC World Test Championship has been introduced for this reason as it began just after the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019. Before this new tournament, many teams have also started to play the day/night Test match with the pink-ball which has attracted the more crowds in the initial stage.

While most recently, we have seen a couple of four-day Test matches in the experimental process, the ICC wants to see this structure in the future WTC. Instead of 90-overs/natural day in the traditional five-day Test cricket, we see 98-overs/natural day in the four-day Test matches.

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According to the stats since 2018, more than 60% of Test matches have finished inside the first four days. ICC is supporting the four-day Test match by looking on this fact. However, many have recently opposed this view. Australian off-spinner Nathan Lyon has pointed out that many recent close and thrilling Tests stretched to the fifth day.

We play four-day cricket in Ranji Trophy, we get results – Irfan Pathan

But Irfan Pathan has pointed out that the Ranji Trophy group stages follow the four-day strategy, and it is bringing enough results. In fact, most of the present first-class cricket runs in the four-day strategy.

Irfan Pathan (Image Credit: Twitter)

Irfan told PTI, “I have been saying that for a few years now that four-day Tests should be there. I believe at least for a couple of years that’s it is the way to go forward. We play four-day cricket in Ranji Trophy, we get results. So why not Test matches?

“Obviously, nowadays results come regularly but if there are four-day Tests, every game will be result oriented…I totally, totally agree with four-day Test matches.”

Indian legend Sachin Tendulkar, Indian captain Virat Kohli, former Indian star Gautam Gambhir, former Australian great captain Ricky Ponting have openly opposed the four-day Test cricket along with Nathan Lyon.