Is One day cricket on the wane ? How to revive the format?

 

Cricket is at the crossroads with the continuous increase in popularity of T20 cricket .  The current generation followers of the game is getting more and more invested in the T20 format as the global leagues all around the world is growing which is looking after the finances of the current generation of cricketers.  

As a result of the more  lucrative T20 format , more and more players are tilting towards the shortest format while a couple of T10 leagues are coming up as well making the game more shorter . Many top international cricketers across formats have also started to refuse their board annual contracts and thus opting for the more lucrative T20 leagues . 

The cricket watchers and fans too have started to move towards T20 formats as they are no longer willing to invest the whole day watching ODI and test cricket as they are more willing to watch T20 cricket in the evening prime time . As a result the attendance in the stadiums are fast dwindling for ODIs and test cricket bilateral series except for a couple of mega test series like the Ashes and India v Australia. 

Of the two formats that is losing popularity, ODI cricket is suffering the most.  No longer the bilateral series draws crowds and TV viewership is also dipped alarmingly .  Even in the on going 50 overs World Cup , except for the India matches and a couple of other games , the stadiums in most games are sparsely populated  especially on weekdays . 

What is the reason for dipping fortunes of ODI cricket . One reason is of course the increasing popularity of the less time consuming  and more exciting T20 format  and the other reason has to be that the ODI cricket format encourages slow moving cricket and  needs a major rejig .

Watching 50 overs of cricket has become so tedious that it is very difficult to sustain the same levels of focus all the while . 

After the first 10 overs of ODI powerplay is done which normally produces some aggressive cricket due to field restrictions, the game simply meanders or drags along between  overs from 11-40  . Only after 40 overs once again some interest comes back as the innings is coming to a close .

To change this monotonous nature of ODI cricket , two options can be considered 

1 .  Reduce the number of overs of ODI cricket from 50 to 40  ( ODI cricket used to be 60 overs during 1st 3 world cups and then it was reduced to 50 overs ) . By reducing to 40 overs the format can gain some more vigour as the batters will not take so much time in the middle 20 overs as it is for middle 30 overs currently  since it is restricted to 40 overs . Hence the urgency to increase the score will come earlier than what happens the 50 overs stipulation .

2. The 2nd option can be breaking the game into 2 phases of 25 overs for each team .  After one team bats for 1st 25 overs , the other team should come out and bat their 1st 25 overs . After that there should be a 30 minute break following which the team which batted first , now bats for their second 25 overs followed by the team for their remaining 25 overs who are batting second .  The innings in the second 25 overs should start from the stage the team had finished their 1st 25 overs . For example if a team was at 123/3 at the end of their 1st 25 overs , they should continue from that score in their next 25 overs . What happens here is that the fans are not bored by watching a team bat for full 50 overs at one go . Here the interest in the game will be more sustained as both teams are batting in 2 phases so after watching 25 overs of the first batting team , the spectators will be watching 25 overs of the second batting team and so the boredom will not set in .

ODI cricket actually needs a bit of "injection"  to survive . Hence one of the above two methods can be tried out to see whether the spectator interest comes back in this 50 year old format which is facing a crisis .