Ian Chappell has wondered if the best players would play Test cricket in the near future.

“(Test cricket) won’t die in my lifetime. But who’ll be playing it? That’s the big question,” Chappell was quoted as saying by Wide World of Sports.
“If you haven’t got your best players, is Test cricket worth watching? The answer is probably no. Test cricket is a good game, but it’s got to be well played,” the former Australia captain added.

“...For starters, if you’re being realistic you can only play Test cricket between about eight teams.

“West Indies have got a problem because they can’t afford to pay their players. Sri Lanka have a reasonable infrastructure but big political problems, and South Africa is similar.

“Whoever thought of giving Afghanistan and Ireland Test status is off their rocker. But you know why it’s been done, it’s so those countries get a vote.

“To me, this whole issue has been coming for quite a while, and I have no sympathy for the administrators.

“I think a lot of the older players will get offers from that area, and that will be a real challenge for nations like Australia who have a lot of good players, and also for nations that can’t afford to pay their players the best rates.”

With IPL franchises buying teams in T20 leagues around the world, Chappell fears a player will not be left with much choice when a dilemma confronts him.

“...you’ve got the problem of the IPL franchises owning teams in different leagues around the world. If you’ve got a decent IPL contract and the choice is between Australia and your IPL franchise’s UAE team, well are you going to put your IPL contract at risk?”

The Australia great also backed Chris Lynn, saying Cricket Australia has no rightto stop him from playing in the UAE’s T20 league (ILT20).

Written with inputs from PTI

‘Slap’ which wasn’t slap

Ross Taylor, in his autobiography Ross Taylor: Black & White, has revealed that he was “slapped”— though “they weren’t hard slaps” — by one of the owners of the Rajasthan Royals during the 2011 IPL after he wasout for a duck.

“One of the Royals owners said to me, ‘Ross, we didn’t pay you a million dollars to get a duck,’ and slapped me across the face three or four times...they weren’t hard slaps but I’m not sure that it was entirely play-acting,” he wrote.