Richard Hadlee says T20 could destroy Test cricket

One of the great all-rounders the game has known, and indubitably New Zealand's greatest ever player, Sir Richard Hadlee has made a strong request to the game's rulers: Don't let down our game.

Hadlee added his voice to the rising concerns of Twenty20 cricket via-a-via the traditional Test matches.

Heaving match schedules, the growth of Twenty20 and the vast financial lures for players from the IPL demand firm controls being put in place by the International Cricket Council, he says.

Hadlee was not induced that the game's ruling body had the forethought and vision to put aside monetary gains for the overall benefit of the game.

"We are in serious danger of having the decision makers betraying the game of cricket," said Hadlee.

"Everything evolves and things keep changing, but this is a revolution within the game of cricket.

"It's new, profitable, successful and brings in massive money. The danger is overload, that you have too much of it, and it swamps other forms of the game and compromises them.

"If one format of the game like Twenty20 eats the game as much as it is doing now - and potentially in the future - it is destroying the game of cricket as a total concept."

"The IPL is franchise cricket, it's club cricket, it is not international cricket. We are two years into it and you can see potentially that there will be more and more of it. It will consume the game. Once it has gone too far and people have grown bored with it, it will have destroyed test cricket and probably 50-over cricket," he said.

Coincidentally, Hadlee's comments came just a day after Shane Warne had advocated scrapping ODIs, and providing a window for the IPL.