Mohammad Azharuddin Disagrees With Virat Kohli's Proposal Over Test Venues

Following the conclusion of the third Test in Ranchi on Tuesday, India skipper Virat Kohli had made a very interesting point. Virat Kohli had said that the BCCI should come up with five permanent Test venues in order to keep Test cricket alive. The India star urged the board to do away with the rotation policy for the betterment of Test cricket.

India have been hosting Test at multiple venues in the recent past. While Test matches were allocated to major centers during N Srinivasan’s tenure as BCCI president, India went back to rotation policy in 2015 whereas venues started hosting matches as per their turns. The repercussions were recently seen in Ranchi as there was a clear lack of interest among the fans.  Only 3000 tickets were sold till the eve of the game.

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However, former India skipper and Hyderabad Cricket Association president Mohammed Azharuddin has disagreed with Kohli’s views. Azharuddin said that all the associations want to host Tests and it will give opportunity to people in all the corners of the country to watch games.

“What will happen to all the stadia being built by other state associations? Why do we have them? Test cricket is very important and all want to host them. Why should they only host T20 internationals and One-Day Internationals? Let people in all parts of country see it,” Azharuddin said.

Earlier, BCCI had eight main Test venues but then encouraged other states to create top-class infrastructure by giving them subsidies. Consequently, the likes of Indore, Dharamsala, Ranchi, Pune, Rajkot and other venues have managed to host Test matches in recent times.

India, meanwhile, beat South Africa by an innings and 202 runs in Ranchi to sweep the three-match series. Asked to follow-on, South Africa were all out for just 133 in the second innings. In their first innings, they were all out for only 162 in reply to India’s first innings total of 497 for 9 (declared).