MELBOURNE, Nov 6: Irked by BCCI’s reluctance to accept the one-Test ban on Gautam Gambhir, Cricket Australia (CA) on Thursday advised the Indian cricket board to assure greater leadership, instead of using its financial clout to serve self-interest.

CA Chief Executive James Sutherland criticised BCCI for challenging the one-Test ban which match referee Chris Board slapped on Gambhir for elbowing Shane Watson in the Delhi Test. According to him, the BCCI needed to use its financial clout far more responsibly.

“The power that India has is connected a lot to financial contribution they make to the game,” Sutherland said. “Something like 70 per cent of cricket’s revenue is generated out of India and to that end, it means that they have in recent times come to realise that with that they can influence more than perhaps they have done in the past.

“With that ability to influence obviously comes power, and as someone once told me, with wealth comes responsibility,” said the CA top official. “That’s something that, I guess, ideally, we would like to see India to continue take a leadership role in helping the game to be better rather than taking these sort of issues, with Gambhir, down the wrong path,” Sutherland was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press.

Sutherland made an oblique hint to incidents where the BCCI challenged many an umpiring decisions, especially on Code of Conduct issues, and said the Indian board viewed the guidelines “in a different sort of light”.

“We have seen in the last five years probably at least four times where they tried some sort of approach to appeal and where the appeal hasn’t been successful that they’ve taken it to another level,” Sutherland said.

Meanwhile, CA is pushing plans for day-night Test matches, believing it may be the only way to protect the traditional form of the game from being swamped by the popularity of Twenty20 cricket.

Sutherland said on Thursday that Test cricket had become “in a commercial sense less appealing” than other forms of the game because its five-day duration and daytime schedule posed difficulties for broadcasters and sponsors.

Sutherland accepted purists might object, but CA was pressing ahead with the idea of staging day-night Tests.

“It just might be the only one that Test cricket stays alive,” Sutherland stated.

“None of us wants the game to go down that [extinction] path and we’ve got a duty to try to ensure that Test cricket remains attractive and relevant in today’s society.”

While Test crowds dwindle, limited overs and Twenty20 matches which are often played at night in television’s prime time attracted a larger audience and offered greater commercial rewards.

Sutherland further said that CA was working with Australian researchers to develop a new ball which was dew-proof and highly visible for night games while retaining the traditional properties of Test-match balls whose wear pattern influences games.

“We’ve got to be careful that we don’t live in the past where Test cricket was the only game and the ultimate game, because it’s certainly not the only game and it might not always be the ultimate game,” Sutherland added. “We want it to be, I certainly want it to be, but above everything, I don’t want it to die.”—Agencies