95% of cricket playing nations need Central Government support, important to have the sport in multi-discipline events: Saba Karim

As the volume of cricket continues to go through the roof more and more nations are having to field separate squads for series which happen at the same time. An England ODI squad led by Eoin Morgan is currently playing the Netherlands in a 3 match ODI series, while another captained by Ben Stokes is involved in a Test series vs New Zealand. With India's two match T20I series against Ireland scheduled to begin on June 26 its a good time to analyse the importance and the significance overall of the bigger cricket playing nations taking on the emerging teams in bilateral series as far as growing the sport of cricket is concerned.

Indian team in England (BCCI Photo)Former India cricketer, national selector and BCCI General Manager for Cricket Operations Saba Karim was a guest on Times of India's sports podcast TOI Sportscast recently and talked about his experience as a cricket administrator looking at growing the game of cricket globally and also what he thinks should be done going ahead to make sure cricket has a larger footprint across the world. Saba feels it is very important for the larger and more established cricketing nations to play the minnow teams regularly. "I look at it as the responsibility of the so called behemoths of cricket to offer such opportunities to emerging nations and that's the best possible way in which you can add to the growth of cricket in a global manner. Cricket as a sport has to become a global sport, we are far away from that and the only way a strong nation like India can contribute to that cause is by taking time out to play against teams like Ireland, Zimbabwe or any other emerging team that is coming through the system and the best format to do so is T20 cricket, because it offers to a