Sri Lankan cricketing great Mahela Jayawardene has urged cricket officials to resist tinkering with the longer format of the game
Jayawardene is currently playing with the Central Stags in the Twenty20 Super Smash competition.
And despite his days as an international cricket player being long gone, Jayawardene said that Test cricket wasn't broken so there was no need to fix it.
"I'm not a huge fan of having a lot of day night [Tests] but they may be a one off here and there which gives it a bit of flavour," Jayawardene told Newshub Sport.
"But four day test cricket is definitely a no-no, you need 5 days to get a result, 4 days is not enough."
During his Test career, the 39-year-old scored over 12,000 Test runs at an average of 49.84.
And he countered the idea that Test cricket is getting boring, suggesting that there's so much talent coming through and so many close results that it's not worth changing for the sake of viewer numbers.
"The whole Australian South African series, every test went to the fifth day.
"All the games had results and if we see the India, England series which is going on in the sub-continent, you need five days to get the results and they’ve been getting results on the fifth day."
"There's a lot of young talent coming through which is exciting, why do you want to change that?"
Jayawardene scored a classy half century in his first appearance with the Stags this season but failed to fire in his second match.
While he favoured Test cricket over the rest of the formats, he said he fed off the energy from the younger guys in the Stags during this T20 tournament.
"For an old bloke like me, I need some young guys around me to show that energy.
"It's good fun, at the same time I can contribute in a different way, try and give a bit back, not just skill wise but mentally to prepare for big games and how they need to improve."
Jayawardene also told New Zealand to be patient when it came to Blackcaps captain Kane Williamson.
"It's quite easy to scrutinize guys on one or two decisions... I think Kane from day one that he wore the Blackcap jersey, has been fantastic and produced some fantastic knocks and taken a lot of responsibility on his shoulders at a younger age.
"He obviously lost a lot of experienced players and Ross is the only one around now. So he needs time to get his team together and drive through for another 2-3 years to make it a bit more consistent but I think so far he's done a brilliant job."
Jayawardene will lead the troops into battle against the Otago Volts in New Plymouth tomorrow night.
Newshub.
