Opinion What a difference the one-day makes

It’s little wonder that the final of the 2007 World Cup ended,literally,in darkness.

Four years later cricket is changed,and in all this time a background hum of worrying has never left it. After a few months of riveting Test cricket (India-South Africa,Australia-England) it’s already difficult to recall the fatalism that gripped the game’s observers two years ago when the five-day game was seen to be in its last days. But despair they did,flailing for radical suggestions to keep alive a beautiful thing — limit Test-playing status to the very best,rustle up controversies to keep the viewer interested,move the broadcast to the Net and out of the exacting grip of numbers-dictated TV channels.

Those worries have now settled on the one-day format. In the current rash of curtain-raisers,there can be detected a protectiveness of one-days,cricket’s new endangered entity. Folks who just the other day groaned about the spectacle of pajama cricket are now appreciative of its subtle drama. For,a few months after the 2007 World Cup,a global competition began rather quietly in South Africa,but by the time India and Pakistan had dispatched their demons by meeting in the Twenty20 final,cricket had another 1983 moment. Success had again stolen over India unexpectedly,but immediately the consequences were clear. The country embraced the further abbreviated game,cricket’s centre of gravity was now ever more firmly situated in the subcontinent. Different stakeholders reacted differently. The International Cricket Council had sought to limit T20 internationals,obviously fearful of the format’s conquering potential. The BCCI midwifed a domestic league to mop up the possibilities,signalling its tight control by seeking bids in sealed cover from franchisees,but drumming up the theatre of an open auction for transactions between franchisees and players.

Nothing’s been the same again. And by the time the World Cup ends sometime in April,be sure readings will be taken about the future of the one-day international,about its capacity to survive as a viable format between the purism of Tests and the diffused loyalties of T20s.

Ever since the first World Cup got under way in England in 1975,the competition has served as the standard by which to announce a team’s claims to supremacy in cricket. It is,for instance,neither triteness nor irrational nationalism when someone desires the World Cup for India if only to ensure that Sachin Tendulkar gets to lift the trophy. It’s all that’s seen to be missing on his record.

(Incidentally,India need not fear a repeat of 2007. The organisers have ensured that a surprise upset or two need not knock out a team,certainly not India. Cricket has a lovely way of coming full circle in response to its latest troubles. The knockout stage was advanced after the experience of 1996 when Australia and the West Indies could afford to forfeit matches and still advance in the Cup.)

Now look. It’s not just that T20 has demonstrated its portability for multi-sport competitions at last year’s Asian Games. India chose not to field a women’s or men’s team at Guangzhou; the romance of Afghanistan reaching the final to meet eventual gold medallists Bangladesh,in a fray that included Sri Lanka and Pakistan,may not signal a new cricketing order; and China’s enthusiasm to have cricket included in the Olympics need not,just yet,send tremors through Test-playing nations. But the gauntlet has been thrown down. While the one-day-centric World Cup is stretched ever more in duration,and not just to Kevin Pietersen’s dismay,T20 may soon be imported at the big — and time-sensitive — multi-nation events. How long can countries like India resist the allure of a medal,and by extension,validation through the T20 route?

If the Asian Games’ T20 experience is an indicator of ways in which cricket may induct more participants,it’s also the format that’s deepening cricket’s reach in existing territories and the IPL may not be an isolated development.

Of course,even if cricket’s best were to cease to be chosen through one-day competition — and by extension the World Cup — that would not mean an end of one-days. But as the competition unfolds these coming weeks,it will be interesting to reassess the skills that keep it apart. It’s seen,for instance,that both Tests and T20s cannot afford one-day’s tolerance for bits-and-pieces players. For all the primacy T20 is said to afford to flat-track bullies,its very brevity is a caution against a part-time bowler whose expensive spell could take the game away from his team. In contrast,John Wright founded a winning one-day Indian squad on the theory that one could so cram the team with batsmen that their combined potential would more than offset the excesses of a part-time bowler or wicket-keeper. He wouldn’t try that in T20.

One-days may well survive — and honestly,for all the overstated defence of Fifty50 cricket,they should. But it will have to be for more than the contention that they are a mean between T20s and Tests. These six weeks will be a good time to work out what separates them amidst a new golden age of Tests and the ascendance of T20.