Salman Butt has requested that the ICC keep track of the annual total of Twenty20 matches played.
The decision by England Test captain Ben Stokes to stop playing one-day internationals has revived questions over the future of the 50-over format. A number of cricketers, both active and retired, have recently expressed concern that One-Day International cricket is about to reach a breaking point. And now, former Pakistan captain Salman Butt has urged the International Cricket Council (ICC) to monitor the amount of T20 leagues played in a calendar year. Butt is concerned that if T20 matches are played too frequently, the game’s quality would suffer and fewer players will want to participate in international competitions like One-Day Internationals and Test Matches.
That’s the way it seems to be, alas. I hope desperately that Test and One-Day International cricket, the sport’s true legacy, will not perish along with the leagues. The International Cricket Council (ICC) must decide how many leagues each year and which organizations will run them. Butt said as much in a video posted to his YouTube channel: “If there are leagues left, right, and center, then the standard will not be there, and the players will not be as interested in international cricket.”
Butt added that the proliferation of Twenty20 leagues around the world was the biggest problem facing one-day international cricket.
The leagues are to blame for this. The number of one-day internationals played in leagues has decreased while the number of Twenty20 matches has increased. T20 cricket was already challenging to follow, so they slashed it down to 10 overs in order to get it into the Olympics. You wouldn’t get a call from them, and you wouldn’t bother going there.
