Srinagar: Australia cricket team opening batsman Usman Khawaja has joined the debate about the viability of 50-over format ODI cricket in the wake of premature retirement by England cricketer Ben Stokes.
Stokes played his last ODI game on Tuesday against South Africa as he said goodbye to ODI cricket citing extensive workload as the reason.
Stokes mentioned that managing three formats at once is not possible for any player and that ‘too much cricket is rammed in’.
Recently former Pakistan captain Wasim Akram had also said that ODI cricket should be scrapped completely .
Joining the debate, Usman Khawaja has said that ODI cricket is dying slow death.
“My own personal opinion – I know a few of the guys are very similar – you’ve got Test cricket, which is the pinnacle, you’ve got T20 cricket, which obviously has leagues around the world, great entertainment, everyone loves it, and then there’s one-day cricket,” Usman Khawaja was quoted as saying.
“I feel like that’s probably the third-ranked out of all of them. I think personally one-day cricket is dying a slow death…there’s still the World Cup, which I think is really fun and it’s enjoyable to watch, but other than that, even myself personally, I’m probably not into one-day cricket as much either,” he added.
“Not impossible, very tough,” Khawaja said. “So much travelling. If you’re playing all three forms of the game, you’re not at home at all really. And then the demands on your body, mentally, physically and a lot of the guys might be playing also the IPL”.
“There’s a lot of cricket going on. Yes, you get to pick and choose, I guess, in certain respects what you want to play but look it can be very tough at the moment,” he added.
Khawaja said that Test cricket is his favorite format and he sees a bright future of it ahead as Australia will take on West Indies and South Africa and will try to secure a position in top two of the World Test Championship table.