Is One-day cricket dying a slow death ?

Champions Trophy starts on 22nd September, which is less than 2 days away. A tournament which sees the coming together of the top 8 cricketing nations, the hype and buzz surrounding an event of such enormity has been surprisingly lull and moribund. And with players of almost all cricketing nations complaining of too much cricket these days, Champions trophy might have come just at the wrong time. What will unfold in the coming fortnight, will hold very important cues to the survival of cricket’s second most glorious format( TEST matches being the first), for ODIs has been ravaged by T-20, a format that has taken over the imagination of most cricket lovers and has also helped the cricketing Boards rake in the moolah in times of dire financial conditions.

It all started with the dull and yawn-provoking cricketing extravaganza in the Caribbean, the Cricket World Cup ’07. What was supposed to be a spectacle turned out to be a damp squib, with the WICB(West Indies Cricket Board) copping most of the flak. They banned the people from carrying musical instruments inside the stadium and also hiked the ticket prices to suit their own selfish interests. They forgot that audience also forms a part of a cricketing spectacle, and a Caribbean stadium devoid of any music is like watching Rocky without Sylvester Stallone in it. It just ain’t the same. What compounded matters was the fact that India and Pakistan, two of the biggest crowd-pullers anywhere in the world, got booted out in the first round itself and their positions were taken by the lowly Bangladesh and the unknown Ireland. Thus began an ordeal so painful that even the end was anti-climactic and Farcical

An interesting blame game ensued and the ICC and WICB traded hefty blows, but 50-overs cricket was at a loss in the bigger picture. A lot of other reasons have also contributed to ODI’s inglorious fall from its heights and none of them have been more damaging than its blood-brethren, Twenty-20 cricket. What started as an experiment in England to bring in the crowds again to the stadium, has now blown into a money-tree for the ICC and the respective cricket boards. The 3-hour time frame and plenty of 4s and 6s thrill the crowd no end and the intensity of the cricket is also generally very high for in a short time, the entire game can change, a piece of magic with the bat, ball or on the field and the game has turned turtle. The Twenty-20 World Cup ’07 that followed the Caribbean debacle, suddenly took the world by storm as India emerged from the ruins of a disastrous World Cup campaign to secure a fairy-tale victory in the final against arch-rivals Pakistan. India, being the land of shrewd opportunists that it is, suddenly decided to take advantage of the situation. BCCI, in a committee headed by Lalit Modi, launched IPL(Indian Premier League), a cricketing extravaganza which saw bidding for players, for the first time in the history of cricket. IPL was lapped up by the audience world-wide and it opened up a stream of cricket that lay hidden for so long. IPL revolutionized everything from the brand of cricket being played to cricket as global business model. Having watched BCCI become the financial top-dog on the back of a successful IPL, other cricketing boards decided to opt for the same model and suddenly ODIs started to lose its charm.

Although the cricket-purists scoffed at the prospect of T-20s becoming the next big thing, the game did alter boundaries and filled up stadiums like never before. With ICC categorically denying to open a window for IPL, players for the first time had to face a situation where they had to choose between country and IPL. With the cricket calendar already packed, a lot of players after withstanding the grueling IPL, broke-down while on tours, earning the wrath of their respective boards. MS Dhoni, India’s captain, interestingly decided to withdraw himself from the Sri Lanka test series, citing too much cricket as a reason although he had just played out the IPL without any apparent discomfort, which set a lot of tongues wagging. Marcus Trescothick, the maverick England opener, then came out in the open with his reasons for quitting cricket. He attributed it to too much cricket and staying away from home for really long periods of time. With the atmosphere brewing of discontent among players, the issue of too much cricket came up and with it came the harbinger of ODI’s doom, for Test matches could not be done away with in any case and T-20 was the new favorite son of Cricket. So only ODIs was left with the option of either re-modeling itself or stand the risk of getting wiped out of Cricket’s history forever.

It opened a Pandora’s box and a lot of negative things flew thick and fast, further damaging ODI’s reputation. The experts chimed that the passage of play between 15-40 overs was becoming very dull and boring and hardly any action ensued. People didn’t want to watch 8 hours of something, that they could very-well have in 3 hours and finally cricket boards agreed that Twenty-20 generated more money than One-day cricket. However there were others who felt that the different forms of cricket could co-exist symbiotically and would in fact influence the style of cricket being played in all three, the game of cricket being the winner in all this.

However, the recent events do not augur too well for One-day cricket. Even though England’s One-day record has been no-where close to their test match record, and they have also managed to lose 6 of their 7 matches against Australia in the on-going ODI series, yet ECB(England Cricket Board) decided to bump off 50-overs cricket from their domestic calender and would instead have a Pro-40 overs competition, a move which was openly criticized by Andrew Strauss, England’s captain. Sachin Tendulkar on his part decided that One-day cricket could be broken down into 4-innings of 25 overs instead of the regular 50 overs a side match. And since it was the legend talking himself, the ICC has decided to look into the matter and see if anything can be done.

I am an ardent cricket fan and my fantasies were set on fire the day I watched Sachin Tendulkar whack the hell out of Sri
Lanka in a world cup encounter(’96). ODI cricket has given us so many memories, with the image of Kapil Dev holding the 83′ World cup trophy aloft imprinted in the minds of most cricket lovers. Who can forget Sachin’s superlative knocks in Sharjah against Australia or South Africa’s mind-boggling, successful chase of 434. In my opinion, a one-day match combines the excitement of a Twenty-20 match and the tenacity of a test match in a perfect manner, for you don’t have the option of coming back another day and setting things right, nor do you have the assurance that a spectacular 30 or a 2-wicket burst would win you the game. And for those who feel that One-day cricket lacks action, pick up a video of any India-Pakistan match, and you would certainly realize that cricket would be lesser with the loss of One-day cricket.