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Old January 2, 2009, 07:45 AM
zainab zainab is offline
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There is also a very good round table discussion by Sanjay Mandrekar, Ian Chappel and Tony Greig,
on Cricinfo, with Tony Greig calling for BD and Zim suspended from playing Test cricket, so it looks like they might not survive after 2010.


SM: Tony, one of the points that England made was their reluctance to play Bangladesh at home, purely citing commercial problems. And staying with that, let me have your thoughts on Bangladesh and Zimbabwe and what their future is in world cricket…

TG: I think they both have a very limited future at the moment in terms of Test cricket. I would keep them going in the one-day game and in the Twenty20 format. I have seen some very good cricket by the Bangladesh side in the ICL. That is not real cricket and you cannot make a Test side out of those players, but they are good in the short format.

England have a point. In Australia we have used that situation quite well because we are lucky, we've got a big country; we've taken Bangladesh to Darwin, where almost no cricket is played. So at least there is a positive move there and there is some cricket in that part of the world. It may not be the greatest cricket of all times but the truth of the matter is, they are getting to watch some cricket, and as Ian pointed out, youngsters like to see their cricket stars.

Maybe England have got to think about something along those lines. But the bigger issue there is that you cannot have sides playing if they are not up to it. We have to try and get Bangladesh and Zimbabwe back to where they used to be and that is not going to happen in Zimbabwe while they have the political situation that they have going. I'm disappointed in Bangladesh, to be perfectly honest. They are taking too long and it is just not good enough.

SM: They have played 57 Tests and they have only one win, and that is against Zimbabwe.

TG: It is just not good enough, and that should be part of that discussion Ian was talking about with the stakeholders. They need to say: We need to cut back on cricket. We need to make sure the cricket that is played is good cricket, and therefore, without really being nasty to Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, who need our help, both of them need to be excluded from the FTP. That will give us a few more days by eliminating both of them from Test cricket.
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