Australia to unleash spin twins in first Test

Australian cricket great Steve Waugh has put the pressure on the world's leading players to put Test cricket first and promote it as the No.1 form of the game.

Waugh says the rapidly increasing popularity of Twenty20 cricket and the financial windfall for players that comes with it is having a negative impact on the longest format.

Quick Single: Australia name XI for first Test

And he believes the game's senior players must follow Australia's lead and share the responsibility of ensuring Tests aren't swamped by the T20 juggernaut.

ALERT: Fans in Australia can listen to #SLvAUS coverage live and free on https://t.co/7zqZfe74xF and the CA Live app pic.twitter.com/vGxI9oi2N9 — cricket.com.au (@CricketAus) July 25, 2016

The 51-year-old, who retired just before the T20 game took off, used the decline of the West Indies as an example of how prioritising T20s has had a detrimental effect on Test cricket.

A long-running dispute between the Caribbean's best players and the West Indies Cricket Board, as well as the lucrative offers available in domestic T20 tournaments, means Windies stars like Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo no longer play the five-day game.

Quick Single: Smith targets his final frontier

And their recent results – the Windies haven't won a Test series against a leading nation in four years but are the current ICC World T20 champions – concerns Waugh.

"The incentive to become great Test match cricketers is not as great as it is in Australia," Waugh told News Ltd.

"We have to hope senior cricketers in each country keep promoting Test cricket.

"Australian players still always talk about the Baggy Green cap and playing for their country and the responsibility rests with senior players in every country (to do the same.)"

The continued absence of the Caribbean's best players in Test cricket is a multi-layered issue, with the WICB's regulations surrounding player availability a contributing factor.

The WICB dictates that a player must make themselves available for the Caribbean's domestic four-day competition in order to play Test cricket, and with the domestic season clashing with several big-money T20 tournaments, those who opt to play franchise cricket are ineligible for Tests.

Waugh says the current situation sends the wrong message to the next generation of players.

"There is a danger there because obviously the Windies are fantastic at T20 and young kids see that. They see they can make a lot of money," he said.

"The West Indies got into a bit of trouble when Chris Gayle, who was a great Test player, said his priority was T20, then other senior players say the same thing, young kids hear it and all of a sudden the focus is on T20."

Quick Single: Top five Australia-Sri Lanka players

While the advent of domestic T20 tournaments has significantly increased the volume of cricket around the world, a handful of the best players in the game have successfully juggled the three formats.

Indian star Virat Kohli, the world's No.2 ranked ODI batsman and player of the tournament in the recent World T20 as well as the Indian Premier League, this week posted his maiden Test double-century, against the Windies in Antigua.

Australian opener David Warner, South Africa's AB de Villiers and England's Joe Root - who doesn't play franchise T20 cricket but starred in the World T20 - have also mastered all three forms, as have bowlers Mitchell Starc and Ravichandran Ashwin.