Hogg wants Ashes, Pakistan-India series instead of Test Championship

• As per his proposal of four-match series between the arch rivals, both countries would host same number of games.

After Shoaib Akhtar, now former Australia spinner Brad Hogg has called for a Test series between Pakistan and India, stating cricket needs ultimate rebirth after novel coronavirus pandemic.

The 49-year-old, who represented Aussies in 123 One-day Internationals (ODI), 15 Twenty20 Internationals (T20I) and seven Tests, wants ICC Test Championship to be scrapped for the time being and proposed to organize Ashes and Pakistan-India Test series.

Speaking on his YouTube channel, the cricketer said, “The pandemic has opened the door for the ultimate cricket rebirth. Viewers have been starved and they want to see some competitive cricket, so scarp the World Test Championship for a while and get a couple of series that are really going to ignite the interest in cricket around the world.”

As per his proposal of four-match series between the arch rivals, both countries would host same number of games.

“Firstly scrap this summer’s India against Australia five-match series and have the Ashes played instead,” he said. “But where does that leave India? They will play Pakistan in a four-match Test series, with two matches in India and other two in Pakistan, over the Christmas period. We have not seen it for a while and the public are starving for it.”

He also highlighted that fans would get the experience of seeing Virat Kohli v Babar Azam in the longest format of the game.

“There are many reasons for it. Firstly, [Virat] Kohli and Babar Azam, who is the best out of those two? Well that will be proven in this series,” he said.

“Then you have got [Jasprit] Bumrah against [Shaheen Shah] Afridi, which means quality bowling attack and then the spinners, Ravichandran [Ashwin] versus [Yasir] Shah and it’s all in Asian conditions. Brilliant stuff, let’s have it!” he concluded.

Earlier, Shoaib Akhtar proposed a smiler idea of Pakistan-India series to raise funds for COVID-19 victims. He was highly criticised by former Indian cricketers for the proposal.