T-20 and the future of cricket

The first season of IPL and the Stanford T20 saga have dominated cricket websites and sports pages (in the cricket playing world) over the last few months. A lot of pundits have speculated that T20 cricket will ultimately destroy both Test and one-day cricket. I believe that the three versions of the game can co-exist.

In this blog post, I talk about the current state of the one-day game and how it can be resuscitated.

There are two major issues plaguing one-day cricket today:

1) The “Middle overs”- The overs between 15 and 40 is the time where most teams consolidate after an initial burst and in preparation for a final slog. The cricket during those overs is generally mundane and predictable.The introduction of power plays has not changed the pace of the game during the middle overs.

2) Too many games- One day cricket has been a money spinner for years now and most cricket boards try to fit-in too many one day internationals during the calendar year and thus trivialize most games. Do you remember the details of any of the bi-lateral one day series/tri-series played over the years? I dont. There just have been way too many tournaments.

The middle overs issue can be fixed by either reducing the 50 over games to 40 over a side or by playing two 25 over innings. I am for the latter option. It would add more spice to the game and also increase the strategy element in the game. Captains will be forced to think “outside the box” and teams will have a chance to make up the deficit in the second innings, if they fall behind in the first.

The “too many games” issue needs to be looked at very closely as well -

1) Starting off with ICC tournaments, the Champions Trophy needs to be discontinued. The tournament is a big source of revenue for the ICC, but makes no sense. The competition is largely similar to the World Cup(actually it is far more competitive, as very few associate nations are involved). It’s time the ICC discontinued this competition. The only major tournament the ICC should organize is the World Cup every four years. The loss in revenues from discontinuing the tournament can be made up by working out a revenue sharing agreement with various T-20 leagues (which I will talk about in detail in a future post)

2) Next in line are tri-series tournaments. Ti-series tournaments these days typically involve two strong teams and one weak team. Half the games in these tri-series tournaments are either one sided or dead rubbers. Case in point is the recent tri-series in Bangladesh, which was a waste of everybody’s time. Pakistan won the tournament, but seriously who cares? Tri-series tournaments should be scrapped as well.

3) Bi-lateral series should be restricted to three one-day games per series. A lot of countries play 5-7 one day internationals during a series, often at the cost of a couple of test matches.

When we talk about the 50 over game (and the 5-day version of the game), we mostly talk about the international circuit. The domestic circuit is generally ignored. The bad news is that not much can be done for the domestic circuit in terms of improving crowds. With cricket played all round the year, it is impossible to get people to watch a 50 over domestic game during work hours. The authorities should resign to the fact that the 50 over domestic game will never attract crowds. However, by playing the 50 over game by splitting it into 2 innings of 25 overs each, the skillset required to play the game will be similar to the the T20 version of the game. The 50 over domestic game can then act as a “feeder” to the more lucrative domestic T20 circuit as well as a feeder to the international circuit, thereby guaranteeing interest among players in the domestic 50 over season. Also, a lot of the revenue generated from the T20 domestic circuit could be funnelled into the domestic 50 over season.


In my followup blog posts, I will discuss Test and T-20 cricket.