Cricket must respect the fan – Dravid

Rahul Dravid has called for cricket’s players and administrators to tackle the game’s challenges by taking decisions that would always “respect the fan.” He was delivering the annual Bradman Oration on Wednesday, the first cricketer from outside Australia invited to do so in the ten-year history of the event.

The 40-minute speech, delivered at the Anzac Hall at the National War Memorial, Canberra, urged the game’s stakeholders to remember that “everything that has given cricket its power and influence in the world of sports has started from that fan in the stadium.” Dravid said players needed to think of the fans when they played the game, in terms of conduct, intensity and integrity.

Administrators, he believed, needed to keep the viewing public in mind when they tried to handle the trickiest of the challenges, balancing the three formats in cricket.

“They [the fans] deserve our respect and let us not take them for granted. Disrespecting fans is disrespecting the game. The fans have stood by our game through everything. When we play, we need to think of them. As players, the balance between competitiveness and fairness can be tough but it must be found.”

Dravid said he had been surprised to see grounds half-full during the India v England ODI series in October which to him was an indicator that there had been a “change in temperature” in Indian cricket over the last two years.

“Whatever the reasons are – maybe it is too much cricket or too little by way of comfort for spectators – the fan has sent us a message and we must listen… Let us not be so satisfied with the present, with deals and finances in hand that we get blindsided.”

The administrators’ biggest challenge in terms of retaining public interest and support of the game all over the world was, he said, to work out a sensible roadmap for the game’s three formats. An alternate plan giving every game context and relevance would have to be worked out because, “the three formats cannot be played in equal numbers – that will only throw scheduling and the true development of players completely off gear. Cricket must find a middle path,” he said.

“It must scale down this mad merry-go-round that teams and players find themselves in: heading off for two-Test tours and seven-match ODI series with a few Twenty20s thrown in.” Dravid described Test cricket as “the gold standard” and the form that the players most wanted to play, ODI cricket had kept the game’s revenues going for three decades while T20 was the format the fans wanted to see.

Despite the popularity of T20, Dravid said, “Test cricket deserves to be protected; it is what the world’s best know they will be judged by”.

The ICC had hoped to bring the championship forward to 2013 and use it to replace the Champions Trophy, but commitments to the broadcaster and sponsors meant that could not be done.

Dravid said he was against the idea of scrapping ODIs altogether but believed that events like the World Cup and the Champions Trophy should be the focus, with other ODIs contributing to rankings for those events.

“Since about, I think 1985, people have been saying that there is too much meaningless one-day cricket,” he said. (Cricinfo)