Cricinfo - Blogs - Different Strokes - Right for the wrong reasons

But, if playing the same length game is so essential, should not Test cricket's training ground, the county championship, be a five-day rather than a four-day competition?

Test matches expanded over time from three days to four and then to five because top-class batsmen would not obligingly surrender their wickets in time for games to be resolved. And all the batsmen in Test cricket, just about, are top-class. Domestic teams do not in general have line-ups consisting entirely of top-class players. They have some pretty average players mixed in with the two or three who might catch a national selector's eye. Give them five days to play their games and they will usually be over in four. It therefore makes sense to schedule it as four-day from the outset.

Playing 50-over cricket domestically in England does not do anything to train people for the international 50-over game. In fact, far from giving people experience of tactical situations they will encounter in the ODI arena, it gives them all sorts of incentives to play very differently.

An ODI team typically has five top-class batsmen and two lower-order power hitters. Between them, they can play aggressively and usually last the fifty overs. A county team, on the other hand, has three pretty good batsmen and two average ones, a big hitter and someone who is really a big misser. If the good batsmen play the way they could if they were surrounded by other good players, it's very likely that their team will be all out in forty because the lesser lights can't keep up. 35 overs to go and only two decent batsmen left is a position that you rarely encounter in an ODI but is not uncommon in county 50-over cricket. So the good batsmen learn to play more conservatively, and we wonder why we can't find anyone who is convincing in ODI Powerplay overs when nobody plays that way domestically because it would be stupid cricket if they did.

Playing domestic games which are shorter than their international equivalents compensates for the lower standard of player. It is no coincidence that South Africa play 45-over games at home and are the most consistently successful 50-over ODI side year in year out – even if they choke in World Cups.

Though the counties made their decision on commercial grounds, they have inadvertently stumbled on the best thing they could do for the England ODI team.

What a wonderfully informed comment from Arvind, sharing with us his experiences of attending many 50-over English domestic games (typically 10.30am to 11.00am starts) and their 40-over counterparts (typically 1.45 to 2.30pm starts).

Now, if I may descend to his own writing style, heavy with self-absorbed arrogance, a short reminder: to view a game beginning at 11am, you need to give up your whole day. A 2pm start is, as suggested, a long(ish) afternoon out.

Moral? Don't shoot your mouth off about something you know nothing about.

Interesting, but surely the bowling attacks at county level are also proportionately worse than the international scene? Even if several batsmen are more likely to get out to good bowling, surely there's more poor bowling to balance it out.

[Mike: A valid point to make about the championship, but in limited-over cricket, an awful lot of the wickets fall because batsmen mishit attacking shots, of which they play proportionately more against bad bowling because they think they can get boundaries.]

i think the timeing in year definatly has something to do with. if the poms want to scrap 50 over domestic cricket, then good for them. just dont expect the rest of the world to follow suit! i would think that a domestic comp should mirror as much as possible the international rules to give that nation its best chances of winning internationally. those who say ODI's are irrelevent must relise that twenty20 has nothing for the bowlers in it with 4 overs broken up into maybe 3 spells is hardly giving bowlers enough time to execute any plan they may have. and that crickets biggest event is the world cup a 50over event makeing the 50 over format quite relevent!

The ECB has certainly been innovative what with the T20 revolution and Pro40 launch etc. The thing of it is to market it well enough firstly to the English public most of whom consider boring or their third choice among preferred sports.

I don't think Pro 40 or T20 etc has done the trick with respect to filling up grounds and till when that does not happen, whether its a longish afternoon or a full day or even 5 full days none of it matters...because empty stands put broadcasters off and therefore the vicious cycle gets perpetrated.

I think that there is a feeling in Australia that 50 over cricket has become predictable and fairly boring. There seems to be a patch in the middle of the innings where not much action is taking place. I was interested in a comment that Sahin Tendulkar made during a recent IPL match. It was along the lines that a family could get an action-packed game all over in 3 hours. The cricket to be had in that time was entertaining and sometimes enthralling. I find 7 or 8 hours of cricket watching a fairly laborious exercise, particularly as I get older.

@Neil and @Siddharth. Well, interesting indeed. Now, you basically say that the problem is not the duration of the game but the starting time. Why don't you start that 50 over game at 1:45 pm. That should solve your problems, right? Because after all, my point about "20 overs taking hardly 1.5 hours" is due to my "self-absorbed arrogance" and because of "shoot my mouth off about something you know nothing about". Why is the end time irrelevant? 50-over format does not take "the whole day" as the author and you both think. It only takes your whole *working* day, and that too, because of the start time.

MORAL: I would take my arrogance with my superior intelligence any day, rather than be lacking in both.

There was a recent piece on cricinfo which referenced a certain S.K.Warne's 6 point plan to improve world cricket.Warne's thoughts are radical and though I agree with him for the most part,I'm not sure I would eliminate 50 overs as a format altogether. There is a definite opportunity for a revamp though. One such option exists in the form of breaking the 50 over game into 4 segments of 25 overs each. Each segment will allow the teams to have use of all 10 wickets and make a new ball available, and over and above that would also allow captains to make as many as 3 substitutions during any stage of the game.
The run time for the game will remain as much as the 50 over format or less, considering that the lunch break can be broken into 3 change overs of 10 minutes each between innings.The time spent on change over could be sold exclusively for advertising with no ads during the innings.This translates to a significant revenue opportunity.
My thoughts then, what say Mike?

I don't see why financial concerns should always be written off as the "great god dollar" as Looch puts it.

Increased revenue is of course directly related to popularity, and I think it's laudable that counties want to encourage formats that people actually want to see - it must be discouraging for counties to put on one day matches during the week that no one wants to turn up to.

Also, people forget that this decision actually drops one major cricketing competition from the calendar, following widespread criticism that too much county cricket was being played as compared to the domestic seasons of other countries.

@Arvind... of course, there's the fact that 50-over games require longer mid-innings intervals, extra drinks breaks, the compulsory ball change...

It is not possible in the UK to start a 50-over game at 2.00pm and reliably finish it in daylight outside of June and part of July, given all possible eventualities. You can't plan for the smoothest possible running - you must ask "what if?" and ensure games don't finish in semi darkness, or get interfered with by dew. as that is a surefire way of creating farcical results.