There is a lot of excitement in Indian cricket over the upcoming pink-ball Test match and while, players and officials are largely optimistic about the proposal, Indian captain Virat Kohli wants it to be a one-off affair as this would allow the purity of the normal sessions to be intact. "This can be a one-off thing. It should not, in my opinion, become a regular scenario," said Virat Kohli, a day before the historic pink-ball Test under lights against Bangladesh at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
The entire move was made by Sourav Ganguly to bring back the audience to the stadium and this has seen a massive spurt in the sale of tickets. However, the Indian captain believes that tinkering with the basic idea of Test cricket just to make it entertaining, should not be the way to approach the game in the near future.
'You can't push me to like Test cricket'
"You can bring excitement into Test cricket but you can't purely make Test cricket based on just entertainment. The entertainment of Test cricket lies in a batsman trying to survive a session, a bowler trying to set up a batsman. If people don't want to respond to that, too bad. If I don't like Test cricket, you can't push me to like it. Those who enjoy the battle between bat and ball and great session of Test cricket, in my opinion, those are the people that should come and watch Test cricket because they understand what's going on," the captain further added.
India and Bangladesh are the latest entrants into the club of countries to have played Test cricket under lights and this entire proposal found momentum immediately after Sourav Ganguly took charge as the BCCI president.
"It had to happen eventually. The thing was to experience the pink ball test in our own conditions first so you get a hang of how the ball behaves. Then eventually going on and playing pink-ball Test anywhere in the world," the skipper said.
He also endorsed Rahul Dravid's view of chalking out a fixed calendar for Test cricket as this would allow people to plan their schedules accordingly which could make Test cricket a way to spend their time together with family.
"I think Rahul bhai mentioned this recently if you have a Test calendar where the series and tests are fixed it will bring a lot more system and sync into people planning their calendars as well. It can't be random saying you never know when a Test match is going to arrive," Kohli observed.
