Former England skipper Tony Grieg came up with an advice for BCCI yesterday urging India to accept "spirit of cricket is more important than generating billions of dollars."

South Africa-born Greig, 65, giving the 2012 MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture, named after his late former England teammate Colin Cowdrey, at Lord's on Tuesday, said, "Much of the game is controlled by the BCCI because it controls enough votes to block any proposal put forward at the ICC board meetings. The reason for this is some countries would not survive without the financial opportunities India provides."

Greig, who called for the IPL to be expanded into an Asian league, backed former Australia captain Steve Waugh's suggestion for players to take lie detector tests in a bid to root out corruption from cricket.

But the thrust of his speech was aimed at the BCCI, with Greig saying India could solve most of the sport's existing problems "if it embraces the spirit of cricket and leads for world cricket, not just India". However, he also said the BCCI's financial focus has led to a lopsided international calendar.

"The net result is, Test cricket is suffering; some players appear not to have the same feeling for Test matches as their predecessors; there are more and more meaningless ODIs (one-day international matches)."

Well said Grieg, we utterly second with you!

Source: TNN