SOS- Saving the One day’s:

The upcoming and surprisingly not-so eagerly-awaited Champions Trophy is not just the battle between the best cricket teams of the world but a ray of hope in the attempt to revive the enthusiasm in this format of the game.

With cricket boards questioning the relevance and popularity of one-day-internationals the ICC is pulling all strings to bring the fans and advertisers who easily shifted gears to the more exciting twenty-20 format.

Critics are right in questioning the popularity of the 50-over format and putting a shelf life on it, the depleting popularity was there for the world to see when the England board scrapped the domestic 50-over tournament and with South Africa likely to follow suit.

Big Brother- Test matches:

This debate comes in the shadow of a much bigger and more important one- the relevance of test cricket. It is indeed ironic that the ODI’s future hangs in the balance, thanks to the twenty-20 format, when the limited over format itself was chosen as an alternate for the longer format.

The dominoes effect has ICC looking for all possibilities to tweak the formats to make them more interesting. With suggestions of reducing Tests to 4 day matches and splitting the ODI into two innings of 25 over’s each- an idea mooted by Sachin Tendulkar himself.

Such transitions and tinkering with the formats come as a welcome relief to some and as a dismay to the purists. With shorter attentions spans and dwindling interest looks like, for cricket, it is survival of the shortest.