RR owner Manoj Badale says Test cricket “could work” if played in same short window every year

Speaking to the Tailenders podcast, Badale said: “We can make Test cricket work if we make it more of an event. We should have it at the same time every year, play a small group of nations that can really afford it, and Lord’s becomes like Wimbledon, an event that is diary.

An overloaded annual calendar has forced many cricketers to claim time in one or more sports. For example, England’s Test captain Ben Stokes retired from ODIs last July, arguing that “there is too much cricket” and players “are not cars that can be refilled and put back in”.

Badale said the solution to this was thinking creatively about scheduling.

“How many times I hear statements like ‘Ben Stokes wants to play Test cricket’ – that’s important, but what’s really important is what the fans of the future want to watch and what they’re going to spend their hard-earned money on. We need to think creatively about Test cricket if we want to that it works,” Badale said.

Badale actually believes that the best players in the world could play 220-230 days of cricket a year, in T20s, one-dayers and soon Tests.

He added that he expects franchises to “become larger entities” in the future.

“I really think that in the next three to five years, the administrators are going to make a number of choices that are going to be really game-changing,” he said.

“We are currently the second most popular sport in the world, but our real competition is other forms of entertainment. We have too many franchise leagues now, so you can have an IPL hierarchy, some big leagues and then some minor leagues,” he added.