New Delhi:

Former greats Sunil Gavaskar, Sir Richard Hadlee and Ravi Shastri voiced strong opinions on the future of cricket at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in the Capital on Friday.

Batting great Gavaskar proposed uniform pattern of bilateral series, which would mean equal number of Tests would be played across each series, and similarly in the case of one-dayers and Twenty20 games.

`The T20 format will have a lot more matches being played now,` Gavaskar said. `But without the Test matches actually being affected to the extent of frequency, you could possibly have a two-Test series, five one-dayers and five T20s and the schedule for all bilateral series.`

Hadlee, on the other hand, urged cricket administrators to balance the three versions of the game.

`Your country must come first, and if other formats of the game allow you to play in it like the IPL or anything else that develops in time, then so be it,` he said.

`I think it`s important for decision makers to balance the game between T20, 50-over and Test cricket, so that they can all co-exist and not conflict with each other,` he added.

Hadlee was concerned about modern players opting out of the longer version of the game to prolong their limited overs careers.

`What we are also seeing now, and it does affect New Zealand cricket probably more than most countries because we don`t have a lot of depth of choices, that players now are starting to opt for the one-day formats and not the Test game. A prime example of that is Jacob Oram,` he added.

Shastri, meanwhile, though not commenting on whether or not the number of international games should be reduced, proposed that teams built a bigger pool of players to cope with injuries to key performers.

`The amount of cricket that has been played in the last 12 months, you never had that much of cricket two-three years ago,` he said. `I`m sure the selectors, the administrators will be looking at a pool of 25-30 players. It`s in their best interest that they do it, because otherwise you will not have your best team on the park.`

`For instance you have a seven-match series, like the one between India and Australia going on at the moment, and I won`t be surprised if India go 4-1 up. Rest the players. Play some of the youngsters,` he added.