BCCI not keen on four-day Tests and two-tier system

BCCI president Anurag Thakur made it clear that while he is ready to accept DRS without the usage of ‘Hawk Eye’, the world’s richest cricket board is not keen on having four-day Tests or a two-tier system.

“If you don’t have a foolproof format in front of you, where is it going to help the game of cricket? I think we should not even [get into] into that,” Thakur told a leading cricket website when asked about a possible tweak in the longest format.

The BCCI president said that he wants to dig deep into the issue of bringing back spectators rather than curtailing the duration of the game.

“We should analyse the shortcomings [of Test cricket],” he said. “Is it the paucity of time? The issue is why aren’t you getting enough crowd for a Test match? That is the basic issue.”

However on DRS issue, the BCCI president made it clear that he is not averse to conditional DRS. “You can have some and leave [Hawk-Eye]. If that comes as an option, we can look into that.”

When asked specifically if the BCCI would accept the use of visual aids such as Hot Spot and real-time Snicko in addition to the standard camera angles, Thakur nodded in the affirmative. He reiterated the BCCI’s longstanding opposition to Hawk-Eye, though, because it is not “100 percent foolproof”.