Aussie cricket legend Mark Taylor says huge problem that’s ruining the sport’s popularity with fans CANNOT be fixed
Former Test skipper Mark Taylor has made cricket’s congested schedule almost impossible to solve as some of Australia’s World Cup heroes play a meaningless T20 series against India.
The 59-year-old batsman hit out at the seemingly endless list of matches as the Aussies battled through yet another series having already toured England, South Africa and India, as well as capturing the sport’s biggest limited-overs trophy won in an exhausting match. nine months of competition.
Australia have lost the first two matches of the T20 series in India, while members of the Cup squad including Steve Smith, Glenn Maxwell and Adam Zampa toil with the summer Test series against Pakistan starting on December 14.
Former Aussie Test skipper Mark Taylor sees no way around cricket’s brutal schedule, which results in sub-par matches like Australia’s current T20 series against India
Marcus Stoinis (pictured) and other Aussie World Cup stars are still playing in the subcontinent – but with big names like David Warner and Pat Cummins missing the series, Taylor points out the T20 matches are not ‘the best playing the best ‘
Taylor is not impressed with the level of play and the planning of the matches.
“There is undoubtedly a hangover, these five T20 matches against India, I think, certainly do not have the same importance as the World Cup final from anyone’s perspective,” he told the radio station. 2GB.
Asked about the brutal schedule that left fans overdosing on the game, he said: “I think it’s almost impossible to fix, to be quite honest.
‘There are many different people who determine the game [in] different ways.
“There are people… who want to see more Test cricket. Then you have this new kid on the block, T20, leagues are popping up everywhere, not just the IPL [India Premier League] or the Big Bash here in Australia, you have American leagues, Saudi leagues, Caribbean leagues, Pakistani leagues.
‘There are competitions that are constantly emerging and they are very attractive to play [in].
‘Then you have a World Cup that just a few weeks ago everyone wrote it off as unimportant, but suddenly when we… [Australia] we liked it and thought, hey, this is pretty good cricket.
Indian Mukesh Kumar celebrates a wicket in the series against the Aussies, but many fans are not celebrating the cricket overdose that comes from the endless matches
Taylor (pictured playing for Australia in 1989) points out that new competitions such as those in the US, the Caribbean and other countries are putting more strain on the sport
‘You have three formats of the game, which allows you to have so much cricket, but it means that at various times series like this one that we are seeing with the T20 will be in jeopardy because it is not the best for the sake of the best.’
A quick glance at the upcoming summer schedule provides further evidence of how incredibly busy the calendar has become.
The Aussies will play three Tests against Pakistan from December 14 and start two Tests against the West Indies from January 17, with the final day of play scheduled for January 29.
From there, six one-day matches against the Windies begin almost immediately, starting on February 2 and ending on the 13th of that month, with three more ODIs against New Zealand starting on February 21.