Raja slammed BCCI and PCB for giving MS Dhoni and Shahid Afridi a Grade-A contract.
MS Dhoni (Photo: AFP)
Pakistan’s former batsman Ramiz Raja joined the much-talked debate of BCCI giving MS Dhoni a Grade-A contract despite the star wicketkeeper having taken retirement from the longest format of cricket.
Raja slammed the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for similar instances where Dhoni and Shahid Afridi were favoured being the star campaigners of respective cricket teams.
“You have to acknowledge and respect the status of Test match cricket and it has to come from the cricket boards, in Asia specifically. For example, MS Dhoni retired from Test cricket yet got the A-grade contract from the BCCI; Shahid Afridi retired from Test cricket yet got the A-grade contract from PCB,” Raja said as quoted by AFP.
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The 54-year-old Pakistani said that money is a crucial element for sustaining Test cricket and asked for a Test match championship just like T20 leagues.
“It (Test cricket) is under a lot of stress in Asia but if we have a properly planned Test match championship, that's the way out of this, otherwise we will be struggling to put aside as much money as is available for the T20 leagues,” Raja added.
Recently, Ramachandra Guha also questioned the Dhoni’s contract when he resigned from Committee of Administrators (CoA).
“Unfortunately, the superstar syndrome has distorted the system of Indian team contracts. As you will recall, I had pointed out that awarding MS Dhoni an ‘A’ contract when he had explicitly ruled himself out from all Test matches was indefensible on cricketing grounds, and sends absolutely the wrong message,” Guha wrote in his resignation letter.https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif
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