Article from the October 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated Magazine.
Are ODIs a dying form of cricket?
No! says Firdose Moonda
Just like the two Tests played between South Africa and Australia last summer served as a reminder that Test cricket is still the most compelling form of the game, the 438-game and parts of the 2011 World Cup were indications that ODIs are not in the same danger as the rhino.
No, 50-overs cricket is not dead yet.
It may only be because the biggest cricket markets, India and the United States, are still willing to watch ODI cricket so broadcasters are willing to pay for it that ODIs survive, but survive they have and survive they will continue to do.
Even when only 80 runs are scored in a meandering 20-over period and one wicket falls, they survive. Even on game 10 of a 13-match series, they survive. Even when teams like Argentina and Afghanistan move up five and seven divisions in less than two years, they survive. And that is the real reason that they should survive.
The 50-over game does not contain the complexities of the longer version (Tests) or the droningly instantaneous excitement of the shorter one (T20) but what lies in-between makes it a viable and necessary form of competition, especially for the Associate countries.
There is enough time to build an innings or sustain a spell, enough time to learn about the give and take of a partnership or to kindle the flames of a duel between players. But there is also not too much time. Not enough to make a lopsided contest go on for too long – because if it is headed one way, it’s only headed there for one day, not five. Not enough to turn genuine questions about the quality of cricket into snide criticism about needing a system that “separates men from boys”.
In a sport as elite as cricket, to have a format that more than 10 countries can play is important because it has served as the primary way for the game to grow. The World Cricket League has five divisions and 48 countries competing, including Norway and Nigeria. If some of ODI cricket’s more cumbersome rules like the number of insignificant PowerPlays could be eliminated, many more countries may be interested in playing cricket because it would uncomplicate what is already a complicated enough sport.
Without those countries and their involvement in ODIs, Ireland would never have beaten England and Afghanistan refugees growing up in a camp in Pakistan would never been able to realise their sporting prowess. Although those countries could have come to play twenty-over cricket, without ODIs, they would not have been able to develop skills needed to play cricket at a higher level.
Associates value ODIs. The uproar that resulted in talks to leave them out of the 2015 World Cup was a clear indication of that. Cricket needs Associates to grow as a sport so by implication it needs its own middle child. ODIs can be pushed to the doorway and have been since 20-over cricket was born, but every time it has looked as though they it will be permanently kicked out, ODIs have done something worthy of staying a little longer.
Ami Kapilevich says Yes!
My argument is very simple: if you’re going to shorten cricket, then do it brutally.
Limited overs cricket was first played in 1962 (as English county games played over 65 overs). But by the time the inaugural World Cup (1975) and Kerry Packer’s flying circus (1977) popularized the concept, it was so wrapped up in boardroom intrigue (Packer offered players more money to play in his rebel World Series than their countries did – think IPL in bell bottoms) that it’s relative entertainment value was not an issue.
It was only much later that ‘they’ tried to make it more entertaining. (If history tells us anything it’s that ‘they’ are a clique of inebriated Englishmen on the ICC board who are secretly Sky Sports moles.)
But cricket is a funny game with, like, cosmically transcendental laws and totally universal values, man. Limited overs cricket was (and still is) a failed attempt to disrupt those values for the sake of entertainment. An example: the First Law of Cricket is “There is nothing – no, nothing; oh nothing at all – so precious as your wicket.” So powerful is this Law is that, faced with a 50-over game, the master tacticians decided that the most effective strategy in a shortened game would be to leave yourself with wickets in hand so that your best batsmen can blast away for the final 10 or so overs.
(Yes yes – Sri Lanka won a World Cup by contravening this tactic. They got lucky.)
Then they tried to liven things up by introducing PowerPlays. Which didn’t work because the Cosmically Transcendental First Law is too powerful to be swayed by mere fielding restrictions.
The Times’ chief sports writer, Simon Barnes, calls limited overs “cricket for people who don’t really like cricket”, which is funny; but I disagree. I think limited overs is cricket for people who love real cricket but don’t really mind a bit of hit and giggle now and then. But – and herein lies the crux – you must make it the best hit and giggle you possibly can. In which case it might not be a bad idea to compare T20s with ODIs.
I can’t remember when the word “boring” attached itself to the “middle overs” of the ODI game, but I’m pretty sure that it got louder as the 20-over game gained traction. In any case, since its first whisperings the term “boring middle overs” has grown in volume, and it continues to echo and resonate.
Now please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that ODI cricket is wrong and T20 cricket is the way forward. (Personally, I’d prefer a 25-over game; for what it’s worth.) But there can be no denying that T20 cricket is more, shall we say, watchable-on-television than the 50-over game. Or let me put it this way rather: T20 cricket is more successful at achieving the objectives that the 50-overs game was invented for.
Of course, the fact that T20 is more watchable does not make it any better than the 50-overs game. If anything, by some standards T20 cricket is much, much worse. But that is perhaps its saving grace. It does not pretend to comply with any of the Transcendental Laws or follow the Universal Values of cricket. It is such a dreadful abomination that it has sufficiently distanced itself from cricket’s core gravitas. It may be broken, but it is finally free.
In the story of Frankenstein, the monster eventually ends up hunting its creator to kill him for creating such an abomination in the first place. The monster is T20 cricket, but the Evil Genius Doctor is not cricket in the pure, Test sense; it is the failed shorter version that spawned it. The Evil Doctor is ODIs.
In these times of criminally curtailing tours to fit in three formats of the game, the biggest sacrifice must be made by ODIs because they are not as important as Tests, and not as entertaining as ODIs. Future series between first-tier nations should typically consist of five Tests, three T20s and just one ODI. Ironically, this will not diminish the popularity of the 50-overs game, but increase it. The fewer ODIs we will be offered, the more we will want to watch them. Their rarity will give them an exceptional value, and increased significance. It might sound counter-intuitive, but it’s probably true: stop playing so many ODIs, and we might just save them.
Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo’s South Africa correspondent
