ISLAMABAD: Batting great Inzamamul Haq was disappointed by the Pakistan Cricket Board’s decision to make way for more Twenty20s during the West Indies tour, by reducing Tests, saying it would hurt cricket in the long run.

Earlier, the PCB had said in a statement that, in consultation with the Cricket West Indies and keeping an eye on this year’s ICC T20 World Cup, they had agreed to replace one Test with two additional T20s during their tour of West Indies.

Inzamam believes that this decision justifies pacers Mohammad Amir and Wahab Riaz’s decision to step away from Test cricket.

“I don’t mind if they want to play more T20s but Test cricket should not be sacrificed for this,” Inzamam said on his YouTube channel.

Inzamam, who scored 8,830 and 11,739 runs in 120 Tests and 378 ODIs, said when Amir decided to retire from Test cricket, he faced a lot of criticism for preferring T20s and league cricket over Test matches.

“The same happened with Wahab as well. But now the PCB is giving the same message by replacing Test matches with T20s. How can you stop the players from quitting Test cricket, in the future, if you are pursuing the same line of thought? I request the ICC and other boards to see it because when the players will adopt the same approach, you will get hurt,” the former Pakistan captain remarked.

Inzamam said the green-shirts should not be worried about lack of matches ahead of the T20 World Cup.

“If you wanted more practice for the T20 World Cup, we should have asked them for T20s without reducing Test matches. If you ignore Test matches, it will hurt our cricket in the long run. Even if Pakistan didn’t get more T20 matches against West Indies, we still would have had enough practice with matches scheduled against England and New Zealand,” Inzamam stated.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2021