Gilchrist voices fears over Test championship future

Australia vice-captain Adam Gilchrist has expressed fears for the future of the International Cricket Council Test championship.

Australia, ranked number one, announced in Melbourne on Friday that they had called off their three-Test tour of Pakistan planned for October because of security fears.

The Australian Cricket Board (ACB) hopes the series can be played on neutral soil, while the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has threatened an Asian cricket bloc boycott.

"It is going to make it (the championship table) difficult to determine, because a lot of that was based on home and away wasn't it," Gilchrist told reporters in Perth.

"Hopefully, it can still maintain a bit of momentum during this difficult challenge."

Australia currently top the rankings followed by South Africa and New Zealand.

Wicketkeeper/batsman Gilchrist, who was honoured last month as the players' International Cricketer of the Year, said he hoped security problems in Pakistan would ease and it would soon be regarded by all Test-playing nations as a safe place to tour.

"We will certainly take our position as No.1 very seriously and try and win games wherever we are," Gilchrist said.

"That is a major disappointment and hopefully, come the end of my career, I don't look back and say I never got the chance to go there (Pakistan) and play test cricket.

FAMILIES WORRY

"But the disappointment, being honest, is levelled up with a relief that I or team mates aren't going and being put in potentially dangerous situations, then your families worry a little bit."

He added: "I suppose every non-Asian team wants to go to the sub-continent and win, it is always a challenge and high on the priority list."

Gilchrist has scored 2,160 Test runs at an average of 60.00. His international players' honour marked the third time in the five-year history of the award that the prize has been won by an Australian.

A string of recent cricket tours to Pakistan have been affected by safety fears.

A triangular one-day series has already been moved to Kenya, New Zealand pulled out of their tour after a bomb attack in Karachi in May killed 11 French people and three Pakistanis and a tour by West Indies was played on neutral territory in Sharjah.

The ACB confirmed on Friday that their one-day series in Nairobi involving Kenya and Pakistan would proceed as planned starting on August 29.

Mail Cricket Editor