By Adarsh Chauhan
Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], May 24 : Former Australian all-rounder Shane Watson believes that the long-term survival of Test cricket will ultimately depend on the choices of the upcoming generation of cricketers, who face a career choice between pushing their bodies to the "breaking point" for five-day cricket or choosing the lucrative T20 circuit.
With the increasing number of T20 Internationals and the rapid expansion of franchise cricket, fans and experts have frequently questioned whether this trend is affecting the relevance of Test cricket.
Speaking to ANI, Shane Watson said that the future of Test cricket will depend on how young cricketers, especially fast bowlers and all-rounders, will approach their career choices in the future. He questioned whether the next generation will still be willing to push their bodies to the limit to pursue Test cricket, or whether more players will opt for white-ball and T20 formats, which may be less physically demanding.
The former Australian all-rounder said, "My thing that I'm most interested in is the young generation, so the 10, 12, 13-year-old cricketers that are coming through. Are they going to have the 'I want to play Test cricket, I'm going to do everything I can', especially if you think about fast bowlers or fast bowling all-rounders where there's so many more physical demands on trying to push your body to the limits to be able to play Test cricket?"
He added, "Then what decisions are they going to make? Are they going to go, 'yeah, I'm happy to push the limit and push my body to potentially breaking point to be able to play Test cricket? Or am I going to play, you know, just put all my eggs in the white ball basket and the T20 basket and know that it's still going to be challenging, but I'm not necessarily going to have to push the limit as far out as I do if I'm trying to play Test cricket'?"
Watson said that as long as younger generations continue to aspire to play Test cricket for their country, the format will remain the most important and central part of the game.
"I think while this generation, the younger generations coming through still dreams of playing Test cricket for their country, then Test cricket will still be the first and foremost, and it'll be front and centre," he said.
Watson said that while high-profile Test series between major nations, like India vs Australia and the Ashes, make strong commercial sense and remain significant, as long as younger players continue to view Test cricket as the ultimate goal, the format will remain an important part of the global cricket landscape.
"I know the bigger series certainly means that there's more, you know, much more - it makes much more commercial sense and it's significant when there's the big countries really playing together in those big Test series. But while the generations that are coming through really see Test cricket as being the ultimate and wanting to play Test cricket, then it will certainly still be a big part of the world cricket landscape," Watson said.
Notably, Watson serves as one of its Super Coaches for Kabuni, an AI-powered sports technology platform redefining cricket training.
Kabuni's platform is designed to transform traditional net practice by capturing player movement and ball tracking in real time, translating it into simple, actionable feedback. With its unique "1% improvement" approach, the system focuses on small, immediate corrections that lead to meaningful performance gains over time.
By integrating voice, video, and visual cues, Kabuni ensures that feedback is not just data-heavy but intuitive and easy to apply, particularly for young and developing players.