A recipe for chaos

Any format that lacks a basic, natural complexity will ultimately collapse as options run out. It is happening to 50-over cricket now and Suresh Menon, writing in Dreamcricket.com, predicts a similar fate for Twenty20 in time.

But artificial solutions will only make the game more confusing. You cannot play the 50-over game as a series of 25-over games and hope the spirit of Twenty20 will revive it. The survival of the sport depends on making the three formats distinct from one another. A Test match aspiring to be a 50-over contest or a Twenty20 aspiring to be a Test match is both confusing and unnecessary.