Brett Lee, Gautam Gambhir not in favour of splitting T20I format into four innings

Cricket has witnessed plenty of innovation since its inception. Recently, the Big Bash League had backed the idea of splitting the shortest format of the game into four innings. The idea, however, hasn’t gone down well with former cricketers Brett Lee and Gautam Gambhir.

File image of former Australia pacer Brett Lee. Sportzpics

Terming the idea as “a bit too much", former Australia speedster Lee said that he wanted to keep some things “traditional”.

Speaking on Star Sports’ show Cricket Connected, Lee said: “I am all for T20 cricket whether it’s the Indian Premier League or the Big Bash to have some flair about it, some excitement to bring people to the game. But there are some things you want to keep traditional when it comes to cricket and I think having 4 innings is a bit too much. I still think it’s always nice to see a target, and try and chase that target down or defend it.”

Former India opener Gambhir took a similar stance regarding the T20I proposal but said that Sachin Tendulkar’s idea of splitting the ODI format into two innings made more sense to him.

“I’m not a big believer that we should split T20 cricket into two innings. I think, Sachin Tendulkar somewhere gave a suggestion that we could try doing it with 50 overs which makes a lot of sense because you’ve got 25 overs (each). It also probably takes the toss away as well – because in some conditions the toss plays a huge role and I was absolutely favour of that as well. But not in T20 cricket, it’s too short a format and there’s hardly any time. Splitting that into 10 overs each will be too short an inning,” Gambhir said.