MUMBAI: The radical suggestion of cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar to use two pitches in Ranji Trophy matches to enable Indian players get used to differing playing surfaces has not found favour with the MCC’s World Cricket Committee which felt it devalued the game.
“First class cricket is about playing competitive (cricket), challenging yourself. It (playing on two pitches) will be like lessening the importance of first class cricket. That is what the committee felt,” said Marylebone Cricket Club’s World Cricket Committee member and former Pakistan captain Rameez Raja at a media conference after the panel’s two-day meeting.
Committee chairman and former England skipper Mike Brearley echoed the same view.
“We talked about that too. We talked about the conflict between using first-class matches as training and the fact that they are proper games of cricket in a proper competition, proper feeling that you’re in a real match. Those two things can be in conflict,” said Brearley.
“I personally think the committee would have probably said the same, that we felt that (the idea of Tendulkar) went too far in turning first class cricket into mere practice matches for international cricket,” he added.
Both Raja and Brearley were reacting to the idea put forth by Tendulkar at a recent event in New Delhi.
