Cricketers not in favour of four-day Tests, here’s why

International cricketers from far and wide are not in support of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) plans to trim five-day Tests down to four.

The ICC has proposed the change to ease congestion in the international calendar and reduce player workload, however, the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations (FICA) said its players have requested that the ICC reveals its plans on how it will use the calendar space freed up by the change, once it has been implemented.

The debate rages on (Image: Sourced).

FICA is the global umbrella group for player representative organisations with members from England, Australia and South Africa. The umbrella body is concerned that administrators are keen to free up space for more lucrative shorter-form matches in the wake of an increasing number of Test matches ending before the scheduled five days are up.

From our discussions with players around the world and our global survey data, it is clear that there is currently a lot of negative sentiment, within the global collective of players, towards such a significant change to the game’s most traditional format.

FICA sentiments

Given the obvious cricketing implications, if the ICC and/or Boards do want to make a broader case for four-day Test cricket, we would need to clearly understand what both the economic and scheduling benefits would be, so we can discuss that with players and gauge genuine collective feedback.”

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Cricket Australia is said to be giving serious consideration to the ICC’s proposal to introduce four-day Test matches (Image: Sourced).

Four-day matches were approved by the ICC in 2017 when South Africa hosted Zimbabwe, and England have since played one against Ireland. The England and Wales Cricket Board has said it will support four-day matches after 2023.

Cricket Australia, meanwhile, is giving serious consideration to the ICC’s proposal, while Cricket South Africa said in a statement recently that “its official policy is to support four-day Test Cricket”. The Board for Control for Cricket in India has yet to offer an opinion.