“Virat said years ago they must be fixed,” Ravichandran Ashwin calls for standard Test centres in India

Kohli had called for the introduction of five permanent Test centres in India back in 2019.

Legendary spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has advocated for the introduction of standard Test centres for home Tests. The 39-year-old said one needed to consider factors such as familiarity for players besides crowds filling up stadiums, while scheduling fixtures in India.

Ashwin also suggested that playing on best pitches had to be a non-negotiable as far as choosing Test venues in India was concerned.

“Test centres is not about crowds alone. It is also about familiarity of conditions. If we are playing a Test in Guwahati or Ranchi, I am not against these venues as a possibility. But the problem in India is every surface has a different identity. There is literally no bounce in the Eastern part of the country. It becomes a very ordinary Test match pitch then.”

“Make sure whichever Test centre you decide has the best pitches. Some venues are better than others only because the pitches are better and the team is used to conditions. That is home advantage. Otherwise the only point is you are playing within that Indian map as home, but is not home,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel “Ash ki Baat”.

Ashwin endorsed Virat Kohli’s views from a few years ago, where the former India captain had called for the introduction of five permanent centres for Test cricket in India.

“Eden Gardens, Guwahati – playing against South Africa there, should there be standard Test centres? Virat said years ago they must be fixed. I personally think it’s about time, why did we make Test centres? So more cricketers could emerge, and their associations would get more funding. But Guwahati as a Test match is not a home game for either team, and I don’t think anyone in the Indian team has played a first-class game in Guwahati,” the 106-Test veteran said.

Back in 2019, Kohli had come up with a suggestion to limit the number of Test centres in the country and focus energies over them only while scheduling to resolve the issue of dwindling crowds for the longest format of the game.

“We’ve been discussing this for a long time now, and in my opinion we should have five Test centres, period. I mean, I agree [with] state associations and rotation and giving games and all that, that is fine for T20 and one-day cricket, but Test cricket, teams coming to India should know, ‘we’re going to play at these five centres, these are the pitches we’re going to expect, these are the kind of people that will come to watch, crowds’,” Kohli had said in a press conference.