Wasim Jaffer: It's worrying to see youngsters ignoring longer format

Wasim Jaffer

Former India opening batsman Wasim Jaffer believes the current generation is not giving enough importance to red-ball cricket and has urged youngsters to focus on the longer format.

"I see a lot of youngsters enjoying white-ball cricket and avoiding red-ball cricket. That's a worry because at the end of the day, you can become a great player only when you score runs in Test matches," Jaffer said during an online interaction with Indian women's team coach WV Raman on the show Inside Out.

Jaffer, 42, represented the country in 31 Tests and has five Test centuries to his credit, including two double hundreds.

"The biggest challenge for today's youngsters is to effectively adapt to all three formats. So, while there is nothing wrong in having big contracts in the IPL, you cannot ignore the longer version either," added Jaffer, who scored an unbeaten triple century (314 v Saurashtra) in only his second Ranji Trophy game at the age of 18, and boasts of a mammoth 19,410 first-class runs from 260 games.

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