Ex-stars back Tendulkar on neutral venues

                                                      

 Batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar’s call to BCCI to do away with neutral venues for domestic matches received support from Mumbai coach and former Test star Praveen Amre and ex-India skipper Ajit Wadekar on Saturday.

Amre felt that the BCCI initiative of neutral venues was good but will not work in India due to lack of sporting wickets.

"I should say that the idea of playing domestic matches on neutral venues is good but I am afraid it will not work in India until and unless the board and the state associations prepare sporting wickets," Amre told Cricketnext.com on Saturday.

"If you see the wickets where we played our quarter-final match (Ahmedabad) and the semi-final match (Chennai) it was heart-breaking for the bowlers as none of the two venues came anywhere near to dishing out sporting wickets and only the batsmen flourished. Even the hardest of hard core fan would not like to sit and watch the bat dominate the ball as there can be only one result and that would be a dull draw," he added.

"To make the neutral venue concept successful we need to prepare sporting wickets where an outright result is possible. Till the wickets are relaid to the satisfaction of the players and the paying public, the board should stick to home and away matches as the spectators will surely not come to watch a dull and drab draw irrespetive of the biggest stars' participation," Amre observed.

Wadekar, who backed Tendulkar totally, said playing in front of the home crowd or in front of the opposition team’s supporters was a big incentive for the players as they would be pumped up to give out their best.

"I will totally go with Sachin’s views as cricket or for that matter any sport without fans support will fail to spur on the players," Wadekar said.

"I remember playing infront of packed home crowd against a full fledged Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi teams during my playing days. The interest shown by the paying public than was amazing as they always left the ground satisfied as the matches used to throw up results more often than not as the wickets were result oriented," Wadekar observed.

"Probably the Indian board should think of going back to the old format till the nature of wickets improve in the country or else take a leaf out of English Premier League or Champions League (both football) and play home and away matches from knock-out stages onwards," he added.