Protect Test cricket, urges India’s Dravid

SYDNEY: Indian batting great Rahul Dravid has urged administrators to cut “meaningless” one-day cricket matches and work harder to win back fans to Tests, which he said remain the “gold standard” for players.Dravid also cautioned against the menace of match-fixing while delivering the Sir Donald Bradman Oration at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Wednesday night. “Cricket must find a middle path,” he said. “It must scale down this mad merry-go-round that teams and players find themselves in — heading off for two-Test tours and seven-match ODI series with a few Twenty20s thrown in.”Dravid, the first foreign player to deliver the commemorative lecture, said finding the right balance between the three formats was the biggest challenge for officials.“Test cricket is the gold standard, it is the form the players want to play. It deserves to be protected, it is what the world’s best know they will be judged by,” he added.