Ponting not in favour of four-day Tests

Sydney : Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting on Sunday voiced his disapproval of four-day Test matches, a day after India captain Virat Kohli spoke on similar lines.

"I'm against it but I'd like to hear from the people who are pushing it what the major reason is," Ponting told website cricket.com.au.

"I know we've had a lot of four-day games the last couple of years but what I've noticed in the last decade is how many drawn Test matches there have been, and I just wonder if they had have been all four-day Test matches through that period of time would we have had more drawn games.

"That's one thing I don't think anybody wants to see. I understand there is a commercial side to it, saving money and things like that and how they would start on a Thursday to finish on Sunday," he said.

"I'd like to hear the other reasons behind it. I don't understand it enough and I'm very much a traditionalist, so if something's not really badly broken then why do we need to fix it or change it?", he asked.

The ICC's proposal of reducing Tests from five days to a four-day affair has also not gone down well with batting legend Sachin Tendulkar and the former India cricketer felt taking away the fifth day from spinners would be just like not allowing the pacers to bowl on the first day of a Test.

"Spinners look forward to bowling with the scuffed ball, taking advantage on day five of the roughs created on the wicket. All that is a part of Test cricket.

Is it fair to take that advantage away from the spinners," Sachin was quoted as saying by Mumbai Mirror.

"There is T20, there is one-dayers and then there are T10 and 100-ball cricket. Test is the purest form of cricket. It should not be tinkered with," he added.

Sachin also felt that scrapping a day of Test cricket couldn't be the solution to revive the longest format of the game and said the ICC should instead try to improve the quality of piches.

"The ICC, in my view, should focus on providing quality playing surfaces. Let the ball do things - spin, seam, swing and bounce.

It will automatically liven-up the game. It will also throw up more results. Currently, there are far too many dead games," Sachin opined.

Ponting, who is part of the MCC World Cricket Committee, noted that four-day Test cricket has previously been raised among the committee and was voted down.

"Let's wind the clock back two, three years ago, it was being discussed then. I know we had a vote at one of the meetings about putting a proposal forward to changing it and the overriding decision there was that we wanted to keep it as five days," he said.

"Everyone will say the Test match game is badly broken because a lot of countries around the world aren't getting much attendance to the games.

We're certainly lucky here in Australia and England that we do get good solid crowds for the Test match games played over five days.

My overall opinion is leave it the way it is and it seems to be working pretty well at the moment," he added.