Test and T20 cricket can sit together, feels Strauss

Test cricket and T20 can comfortably co-exist despite the mushrooming of franchise-based leagues, feels former England captain Andrew Strauss.

Strauss, who is currently the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) cricket committee, took into consideration the expanded two and half months window for the IPL while making the assessment.

“One thing we know in other countries, Test cricket doesn’t pay the bills, like it does here,” Strauss told the Daily Telegraph.

“The T20 format is the way that a lot of people get introduced to the game in the first place. I still maintain that they can sit together comfortably, Test and T20 cricket.

“But the challenge we have is (to provide a) manageable schedule that allows players to do both. That is really complicated. It’s multi-dimensional,” Strauss added.

Recently star New Zealand left-arm pacer Trent Boult pulled out of the central contract so that he has more time to play franchise cricket.

“It definitely feels like right at the moment, the rate of change is increasing.

“And the truth is, none of us know what’s around the corner so you can all look into the future and go, ‘Yeah, we’re going to have this situation where players are signed up to franchises for 12 months of the year and there’s less international cricket’. We don’t know any of that at this point,” he said.

“They (the players) will always look at those opportunities side by side and decide what’s best for them and you don’t hold that against them,” Strauss said.

“And so we need to continue promoting all the brilliant things that cricket in this country offers players — we want to have a strong vibrant domestic game and we want to make sure the players are playing the right balance of formats as well so that it’s not all drifting down that white-ball short-form route.

“There’s still plenty of players that want to commit and challenge themselves to be the best Test cricketers they can be,” Strauss, who is leading the high performance review into the future of the English game, said.

Urging the English cricketers to be nimble and “adaptable to changes”, Strauss said: “We can’t afford to be slow moving and have our heads in the sand.

“I think that’s really important that we set ourselves up in this country, we set the game up in a way that allows us to be flexible and adaptable.”