London, July 20 (IANS) Pakistan's legendary cricketer Imran Khan has suggested scrapping of the 50-over format to save Test cricket from dying.

Imran spoke at the MCC's annual Cowdrey Lecture at Lord's and said abandoning the 50-over format will free up time in the calendar for more Test cricket, though he feels there is space for a 50-over World Cup.

"To my mind, a solution would be rethinking the 50-over game," Imran was quoted as saying in the Telegraph.

"Twenty20 has taken off so well that, rather than having the 50-over game, we might as well just go straight down from Test cricket to 20 overs. I do think there is still a place for a 50-over World Cup, once every four years.

"I think it would be interesting to see the skills honed in Twenty20 cricket and five-day cricket applied in a one-day format. Whether cricketers or administrators will buy into such an idea, I don't know."

Imran also warned that unless the international cricket is radically restructured the best players will retire to earn vast sums playing in tournaments such as the Indian Premier League.

"The calendar is already being carved up in an ad hoc way, dictated by money and short-term compromise," he said. "Soon you will find a lot of players skipping series - key players - simply because of the amount of cricket.

"Some sort of football-style squad rotation will come in soon, especially for fast bowlers. Wicketkeepers, too, may be prime candidates for rotation, because of the intense concentration they have to have on every ball.

"Players will save themselves for where the money is. And the danger is that you will have Test cricket being reduced to very ordinary cricket that could die. If your stars don't continue to play in Test cricket, you will just see standards going down. That's the danger; and the way things are going it could happen," Imran warned.