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Auckland: Richard Hadlee has sounded a dire warning that Test cricket will be seriously threatened unless the ICC steps in to halt the spread of Twenty20. However, Hadlee was concerned about the ICC's ability to put aside the monetary attraction of the shortest format, especially the IPL, to preserve the five-day game.
"We are in grave danger of having the decision makers betraying the game of cricket," Hadlee told NZPA. "Everything evolves and things keep changing, but this is a revolution within the game of cricket. It's new, marketable, successful and brings in huge money. The danger is overkill, that you have too much of it, and it swamps other forms of the game and compromises them.
"If one format of the game like Twenty20 consumes the game as much as it is doing now - and potentially in the future - it is destroying the game of cricket as a total concept. The IPL is franchise cricket, it's club cricket, it is not international cricket.
"We are two years into it and you can see potentially that there will be more and more of it. It will consume the game. Once it has gone too far and people have grown bored with it, it will have destroyed test cricket and probably 50-over cricket."
The comments from Hadlee, who held the world record for most Test wickets when he retired, came as another former great, Shane Warne, called for the end of 50-over international cricket and suggested that countries play only Tests and Twenty20s. However, Hadlee was more concerned with the future of Test cricket, which he said remained the ultimate form of the game.
"A lot of players today would say they enjoy test cricket more than anything else," Hadlee said. "The point is they are also faced with the other forms of the game where for less effort the rewards are 10 times greater.
"We all know now that Asia, and more particularly India, have a more powerful say [at ICC level) because they generate that much more a higher percentage of revenue, which other countries benefit from. So, who protects the game? The decision makers on the ICC have to try and control it so that all the games can co-exist and live together."
