Hodge worried about longer format's future

Brad Hodge is concerned that young players will stop focusing on Test cricket as their ultimate goal as Cricket Australia's pushes its resources into the Big Bash League. Hodge is retired from first-class cricket and will play with the Melbourne Renegades in the new eight-team competition, but one of his career highlights was playing six Tests for Australia.

Now, with greater opportunities for fringe players to break into domestic cricket in Twenty20 rather than the longer format, and with bigger pay cheques on offer, Hodge is worried that the lines might be blurring for younger players seeking to make it.

"My whole life was founded on trying to play cricket for Australia at Test level and I wish the mental side of the younger player was the same, but I'm just not sure it is," Hodge told the Age. "Most of the talk around here is about this Twenty20 competition … no one gives a toss about the other two forms of the game at the moment.

"It's hard for me to think about what a young player would want, but the few I have spoken to, what they want is to play IPL, to play Twenty20, and Test cricket is probably not right up there."

Hodge, 36, chose the Docklands-based Renegades over the Melbourne Stars in part because of the team's pulling power with a pace duo of Shaun Tait and Dirk Nannes. However, he said splitting the city into two teams, while retaining the traditional Victoria side in the Sheffield Shield and one-day competition, could be dangerous.

"There is a risk to state cricket … the Bushrangers brand is very fragile. I just can't see how it's going to compete against the Stars and the Renegades for market share," Hodge said. "Shield cricket and one-day cricket are just going to fall off the perch, unfortunately.

"The reality is that people want to play Twenty20 and the public want Twenty20 and I'm not sure people are going to be interested in watching Test match cricket or one-day cricket … as much as the administration say they are going to protect [Shield cricket], I think it's going to fall away and become obsolete."

However, the Victoria coach Greg Shipperd does not share Hodge's pessimistic views on the future of Sheffield Shield cricket. Shipperd told ESPNcricinfo earlier this month that he believed Twenty20 cricket, far from taking players away from the longer format, would help them develop their game.

"I don't see any players that are really just interested in that form," Shipperd said of T20. "The ones who have found their way through one-day cricket and T20 cricket into the system are just as hungry to improve their skills and play as many days of cricket as they can. We still see a great appetite for learning the skills in the longer form of the game. By being exposed to these pressure situations in the shorter form of the game, and the need for variety, it actually adds to their skill set."

Shipperd's theory has been backed up by the development of the batsman David Warner, who played T20 cricket for Australia before he had even made his first-class debut. But despite originally being pigeon-holed as a short-form slogger, Warner has developed his longer game and was player of the series in Australia A's recent first-class games in Zimbabwe, where he made a career-best 211.

"My main focus was to try and score runs in the four-day stuff and it happened," Warner told AAP. "[Test cricket] is my goal and hopefully one day I think I can achieve that. My aspirations are to get the baggy green and at the moment I'm going the right way about it."