ICC concerned about quality of warm-up matches

Prior to every full-fledged series, the visiting teams play a couple of warm-up matches in order to get themselves accustomed to the conditions and get themselves fine-tuned before the international fixtures. However, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has been in a fix surrounding the matches for the reason that the home teams aren’t offering best practice to visiting teams.

The same was also seen in the warm-up match before the start of Australia’s tour of Pakistan when Pakistan ‘A’ didn’t field their best spinners in the four-day practice match. Recently, ICC General Manager Geoff Allardice raised concerns regarding the issue and mentioned that the quality of such matches depends on how the participating teams treat each other.

We should be strict on that area

“At this stage, we don’t have any power of enforcing regulations. But we have been raising this issue at ICC meetings to help make this situation better,” Allardice was quoted as saying to the media in Dubai during the first Test between Pakistan and Australia.

“All of the countries have spoken about trying to make sure that the teams get a fair opportunity to prepare and that’s about net bowlers, warm-up matches, opposition quality, the composition of the warm-up match and the pitch conditions.”

“It’s an issue. South Africa made similar comments in Sri Lanka. I think the idea should be about giving the opposition the sort of preparation that they would really desire. We should be strict on that area. But it really comes down to how the two teams treat each other and how all the countries treat each other,” the General Manager added.

Previously, Virat Kohli, the Indian captain, has also criticised the nature of the matches. India, earlier this year didn’t play a warm-up match prior to their South Africa tour. They played one game against Essex before their five-match Test series against England. The Indian team is also scheduled to play a couple of such matches during their tour of Australia later this year.

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