Emerging Cricket Roundtable – ODIs in Crisis!

Tom

My last thought, I want to echo Shounak: The first couple of weeks of this tournament were very slow, but steadily enthusiasm for the tournament has increased. Still very few thrilling games but crowds are up and fan engagement is improving, there’s even reports of record viewing figures. That could be down to a lot of things, the ICC/BCCI’s shambolic organisation, India’s ongoing successes, and perhaps that full member fans and the teams themselves are taking ODIs more seriously after a period of not prioritising them.

It is amazing how fast things have changed, even in the time we have collectively written this piece. The picture has gone from bleak, to dire, and now looking perhaps a little more solid. A lot depends on this upcoming ICC meeting but looking at an increasing number of comments saying ‘we need an ODI league’, including from Cricket Australia sources. I don’t think the end is nigh for ODIs, even if things are currently unclear.

We’ve seen some great ODIs this year alone. The League 2 run-in ending in that amazing game in the dying light of Kathmandu. That tied game at the World Cup qualifier that ended in Logan van Beek’s superhero moment. Harare bouncing with every Zimbabwe win only for it to end in heartbreak, Bas de Leede’s one-man win to qualify ahead of Scotland. Keshav Maharaj’s last stand agaisnt Pakistan and the Trans-Tasman thriller with a 771-run aggregate. What did all those games have in common? They were all played in tournaments.

All is not rosy, there’s been plenty of dull games too, but hopefully the ICC can have some constructive discussions about on-field and structural changes to make the format more inspiring. At least I hope.

Rod

We’ve only scratched the surface, of course, but a few things are clear, none of them surprising.

While we may differ about some aspects of the format, we’re all agreed that ODIs need to continue as a feature of the international programme, and that they are of vital importance for upwardly-mobile Associate nations (apologies to Ryan Cook for referring to That Which Cannot Be Named!). We all see the experience of the Dutch in the Super League as exemplary of what can be achieved with regular opportunities to play against Full Members, and we agree that the return to bilaterals is a classic example of the ICC’s short-sightedness and lack of real concern for the welfare of the global game.

A decent, consistent league structure is vital in this regard, extending from the top as far down the rankings as possible; this applies not only to 50-over cricket, but also to T20 and probably to multi-day cricket as well, although those are topics for another day or days. And of course, although we haven’t addressed the point – and probably should have – to women’s cricket as well as to men’s.

Underlying all this is a demand that we in Emerging Cricket have been making since we started: what cricket needs more than anything else is a fundamental change in attitudes among the leading Full Members, from pursuit of their own narrow self-interest to a vision for the development of the global game within parameters of decency and equality. Other governing bodies have managed this: World Rugby, for example, dropped its tier system in 2020 in favour of a fairer, though still articulated, system of membership categories, and the success of their current World Cup and the build-up to it has provided a dramatic contrast to cricket’s. Let’s hope the IOC succeeds where Lord Woolf failed; it would be a supreme irony if it were the IOC which taught cricket’s bosses about transparency and integrity!

Our starting-point for this Round Table was some astonishingly ignorant comments about the one-day game by people who ought to know better, and we need to keep doing everything we can to ensure that the needs of cricket’s emerging nations are understood, appreciated, and above all, publicised. Even as we have been having this discussion It has transpired that the ODI format may be in real danger, with spurious arguments about small crowds at the World Cup (whisper it not that mismanagement by the BCCI might have played a part in that!) being deployed to signal the possible death of the format.

Don’t let this discussion end here! We certainly won’t.

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