Former cricketer AB de Villiers expressed his dismay over the absence of a third Test in the recent South Africa versus India series which ended level at 1-1. South Africa had dominated India in the first Test in Centurion, while India returned the favor by winning in Cape Town.
However, the lack of a third Test in the series restricted the teams from winning the series. It also robbed India of an opportunity to win their first Test series in South Africa.
Many former cricketers like Ravi Shastri slammed the scheduling of the series and even raised questions over future of Test cricket.
AB de Villiers has now joined the bandwagon saying that India, Australia, and England will be playing a lot of Tests but for other teams to also play a large number of Test matches, “something will have to change”.
“I am very upset about the fact that we didn’t get a third Test. Once again you got to blame T20 cricket around the world, the ICC, the scheduling. I don’t know who is there to blame. All I know is something is not right. If you want to see more Test cricket things are gonna have to change. There will be enough cricket between India and Australia and England, I can tell you that. But if you want to see all the teams in the world competing to see who is the best Test team in the world, something will have to change,” De Villiers said on his YouTube channel.
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The second Test ended in just 107 overs with 23 wickets falling on the first day. India became the first Asian side to win a Test at Newlands. The pitch has come under a lot of criticism for varied bounce throughout the match.
“It (Cape Town) was a pretty stock-standard wicket in my opinion. I remember jumping around there on Day 1. If you can just get through the first session on Day 1, it gets easier. If you see the players who were playing their shots and not hanging around, they were the ones doing well.
I remember Ben Stokes scoring a double-hundred there. I myself scored some hundreds there. You can’t allow bowlers like Philander, Bumrah, Siraj, Rabada to keep bowling on off-stump,” De Villiers added.
(First Cricket inputs)
