Love how teams are playing Test cricket now: MS Dhoni
England are often given credit for bringing a revolution in Test cricket. Under coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes, the Three Lions have played an aggressive brand of cricket and found immense success. Previously, players like Adam Gilchrist, Virender Sehwag, and David Warner, have played in a similar style but it was for the first time that an entire team showed aggressive intent in red-ball cricket.
Given Bazball’s success, other teams have started following the template. India gave freedom to the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, and recently Sarfaraz Khan while Australia has the likes of Cameron Green and Travis Head taking the offensive route of scoring in the longer format. It has resulted in more games finishing with a result rather than draws. Over the years, multiple Test matches were finishing on level terms and England in a way changed that as teams seem more interested in playing result-oriented games these days.
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Reflecting upon the same, former India captain MS Dhoni stated that he prefers the game to end with a result rather than a draw. He noted that every team has a style that they follow but he prefers a result which necessarily wasn’t the case when he himself was regularly playing Test cricket.
“You give something a term, it becomes much more interesting because you start talking about it, you start relating to it but at the end of the day what is it? It’s a way to play cricket. Some people want to play aggressive cricket, some people want to play authentic cricket. A lot of that depends on the kind of team you have got – whether they can change the way they play that cricket,” Dhoni was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
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“Imagine telling someone who doesn’t know much cricket we play over five days and we start at 9.30 and 4.30 is the scheduled end of play, we play till 5[pm] sometimes, and after five days we don’t get a result. That’s not nice for the game. So I love how there are more results in today’s world. Even if we are playing only four days of cricket and one day gets washed out, still you get a result – that’s the beauty of Test cricket and that’s how it should stay – you want to get a result after five days and you shouldn’t have a draw,” the Ranchi-born added.