With the announcement of rewards for players participating in the longest format of the game in India, the Board of Control for sport in India (BCCI) has maintained its efforts to safeguard red ball sport in general and Test cricket in particular. Jay Shah made the historic decision to declare that members of the Test teams will get incentives; in fact, the new programme will benefit even non-playing members.
“The goal is to promote and safeguard Test cricket,” Shah stated to Cricbuzz following India’s 4-1 victory over England on Saturday afternoon in Dharamsala. “The plan will help the team even if they are not players,” the BCCI secretary continued.
Kevin Pietersen praised the action right away, expressing his approval. It’s so admirable that @JayShah is working so hard to safeguard Test Cricket! To defend Test Cricket in this way, we need strong leaders! (sic),” the former captain of England said on social media.
According to Shah’s incentives announcement, players who are in the starting lineup for more than 50% of the Test matches in a given year would be eligible for an incentive worth Rs 30 lakh. Each match, the non-playing member would be eligible for Rs 15 lakh. A player will receive Rs 45 lakh each game if they participate in 75% of the Tests in a given year. Members who do not participate in games will receive half of that total, or Rs 22.5 lakh. This is in addition to the player’s match fee of Rs 15 lakh from a test.
The effort follows the BCCI’s decision to seriously consider individuals who are not paying their dues in domestic cricket’s red ball league. Players who were discovered to be boycotting domestic red ball cricket (Ranji Trophy), including as Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer, were refused central contracts by the BCCI.
The BCCI’s decision is being made at a time when other cricket-playing nations are beginning to choose other formats more. For example, Cricket South Africa recently travelled to New Zealand for an away Test series with an experimental third string squad.
But India’s coach, Rahul Dravid, expressed disappointment that the BCCI had to declare prizes in order to save Test cricket. He stated that, in his opinion, the BCCI declaration is more of an honorific than an enticement or incentive.
“That the BCCI is acknowledging it is wonderful… Following the Dharamsala Test, the India coach remarked, “I think it’s a reward, not an incentive.” “I believe that everyone aspires to play Test cricket, based on the men that entered and participated in this series. It’s just an understanding of what you must possess in order to live and participate in Test cricket. You don’t understand until you get here that, although it may be really rewarding, there are moments when things can be difficult and difficult.”I am sure that there will be a lot of people who still want to play test cricket, especially in a series like this (the recently concluded five-Test series against England) and Test matches we’ve seen in the last four to five months, if they are well supported and well documented by people like you,” Dravid said at the media conference following the match.
“I sincerely hope that playing Test cricket won’t be motivated by money. It’s wonderful to see that the effort and difficulty of playing Test cricket are acknowledged. I hope not, because I wouldn’t view it as a motivator to force people to play Test cricket. I hope that’s not the case in real life. And to play 100 Test matches, like (R) Ashwin has done, is a feat that only a unique individual can do. You deservely endure a great deal. You people gave Ashwin a lot of love tonight, and Jonny Bairstow gave Ben Stokes a lot of love a few games back. Since I believe you are all aware of how difficult the format is and how much work it takes to be able to be consistent and hold up over time in this format. “We don’t commemorate 100 Twenty20 matches in the same manner, do we?” questioned 164-time Test player Rahul Dravid.
