Need for bold changes to enhance game’s global appeal and maintain traditional significance
Cricket, a bat and ball sport, is the second most followed sport in terms of fan following in the world, with over two billion fan bases worldwide. It has its origin and developed as a sport in Great Britain in the 17th century. As an amateur sport cricket initially was played with a hockey stick-like bat and a hard leather ball. Then in 19th-century cricket came to be played at a professional level, but only by the elite class.
Cricket’s first international match was played in 1844 between what were essentially club teams from the USA and Canada, in Toronto. In 1876-77, two nations England and Australia, which subsequently proved to be the giants of the game played their first Test match at Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia. Since then the game has grown tremendously yet so slowly. From a few countries, cricket is now being played in more than a hundred countries and in multiple formats.
With age cricket developed and got many faces in the form of multiple formats: from timeless Tests to modern-day T10 games.
Cricket expanded to a great extent in the twentieth century. From England and Australia, it expanded to South Africa, West Indies and India, and was only played in Test format. Until World War II, all Tests were timeless Tests. The longest Test match in Australia was the fifth Test between Australia and England in Melbourne in 1929, which lasted for eight playing days. And the last timeless Test match was the first Test between England and South Africa at Durban in 1939, which was abandoned as a draw after nine days of play spread over twelve days, otherwise, the England team would have missed the boat for home.
After that, timeless Tests were made a thing of the past and a time limit came to be introduced in cricket with six days, including rest day, provided for a Test match to finish. With advancement in time rest days too were scrapped from Test cricket and the time for Test matches to finish was made five days.
Cricket expanded further in the second half of the twentieth century to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and other Asian, African and North American countries. Cricket entered a new era in 1963 when English counties introduced the limited overs variant. And cricket’s first premier tournament, the World Cup was played in 1975 in this new variant. This variant came to be known as One Day International or ODIs for short and was played with two innings of sixty overs each. The format gained in popularity and attracted huge crowds as it was much shorter as compared to Test cricket and was much more result-oriented with surety of attaining a result. In the 1990s the number of overs in an innings in an ODI game was reduced to 50 and to this date, the number remains so.
Major breakthrough in cricket was seen in the 2000s when a much shorter format in the form of T20s was introduced. It revolutionised the cricket. The format caught the eye of an average cricket fan and it attracted and attracted huge crowds worldwide. It proved to be the thing which cricket had lacked. Through this very format, cricket got commercialised. T20 Leagues sprang all over the cricketing world, taking the game to newer audiences. But at the same time, it threw cricket and its administrators into a totally new challenge; that of balancing formats at the international level as well as balancing between franchise cricket and international cricket.
With so many formats at international, domestic and franchise levels like five-day Test cricket, four-day Test cricket, One Day Internationals, T20s, The Hundred, T 10, and recent one the 6ty, the question arises as to which format the cricket or ICC should adopt at international level to be the sole format, as fans’ interest in all formats is diminishing very fast. Shall it be a longer version; the Test cricket? Or shall it be the ODIs? Or shall it be T20s? Or does cricket need a newer format or an amended/reformed format of any of these? The answers to these questions aren’t simple to provide. But what is clear is that cricket needs a shorter, time-bound format to thrive in its traditional and newer audiences. So Test cricket, given its longevity cannot become so.
On the other hand, T20 is too short a format. No doubt it consumes less time (3-4 hours) to complete a T20 match, but the format is not the true representation of this beautiful game, despite its ability to draw huge crowds. And more so a number of milestones and achievements which are associated with the game traditionally are very hard to achieve in T20 cricket, like hundreds, taking five for etc. And in case the playing conditions are balanced a bit in T20s like having more than 70-metre boundaries, playing without fielding restrictions, and allowing a bowler to bowl more than two bouncers per over, then surely the probability of hundred-making in T20s would go very down. So does that make ODI cricket the automatic choice for the sole format? The answer to this question is a big No. At least not in its present form.
The advent and popularity of T20 cricket have affected the ODI format the most. Fans’ interest and association with the format have diminished dramatically. Watching a game for eight hours has become an uphill task for the fans. The number of bilateral ODIs and ODI series’ being played has gone dramatically down. Many high-profile players are deserting ODI contracts and some others are either retiring too early from the format or are giving preference and prioritising the much shortened T20 format.
Fans, the guiding force behind the popularity of any sport (cricket in our case), too have divided and shared their interests in different formats of the game. While English fans are glued to test cricket, Australian fans have maintained balance amongst formats. Indian and Pakistani fans have divorced not only Test cricket but ODIs too. High-profile matches in the ongoing World Cup in India like that of Australia vs New Zealand, Pakistan vs South Africa, etc have seen a low turnout of fans coming to stadiums. And the case of fans in rest of the cricketing world is similar.
Cricket needs a format which is less time consuming, but at the same time should be able to accomplish the milestones which are associated with the game from antiquity. With T20s already out of the contention of becoming the sole format at the international level, the onus and responsibility of fulfilling that falls on ODI. Mass changes need to be introduced in ODIs to make them compatible with the present demands of the international cricketing market.
Cricket is fundamentally a “shot “ game as against the “hit” game and it should remain so. The changes should range from reducing the number of overs per innings to 27, 28 or 30 which would mean the top four can have ample deliveries to accomplish the personal milestone of scoring a hundred, which is an essential ingredient of the game, permanently fixing the size of the boundary to something in between 68-75 metres. Fluctuating boundary size runs to the detriment of the bowlers. A sixty-metre hit at Eden Park, New Zealand or a fifty-five metre hit at Indore or Bengaluru in India is six on both these places but the same hit might be a catch at MCG or Eden Gardens. This very thing prevents the younger generation from taking bowling as a career option, thereby resulting in ignoring or I can say alienating half of cricket’s fan base.
Power plays need to be scrapped altogether with no fielding restrictions, at all. Why should a batsman score at the cost of a bowler? Quite often mishits reach boundaries because of fielding restrictions and shorter boundaries. Imposing fielding restrictions is like telling Muhammad Ali to fight with his left hand only. There should be the use of only one ball, so that the spin bowlers who are an important part of the game, remain relevant. More importantly, the over rate of 13 per hour must be maintained at all costs, so that completion of a match within five hours could be achieved. Provisions for fixed drinks breaks should be there and no unnecessary breaks should be allowed.
This reformed ODI format should be called as International Cricket, instead of One Day Internationals. As far as T20s are concerned they need to be abolished at the international level and should only be played at the franchise level and promotional level among the associate nations of the ICC. The ICC World Cup with more than twenty participating nations should be the lone multi-national event to be organised by the governing body. The Asian Cricket Council’s Asia Cup should be held every four years in between two World Cup years instead of holding it every year.
With Asia and Africa being the regions of special focus for cricket development, the number of participating nations in the Asia Cup shall go beyond eight. Last but not least, the International Cricket Council, the governing body, must show Positive Discrimination in favour of those nations which have the potential to take cricket to newer heights in their respective countries like Nepal and to those nations which are unexplored and virgin territories in terms of sports, which most of the Asian and African nations already are.
Like millions of fans, I too want cricket to grow and be a truly global game.
The writer is an Advocate at J&K High Court Srinagar and an ardent follower of Cricket