One-day cricket - first steps (12 May 1999)

12 May 1999

One-day cricket - first steps

Kh Anwarul Islam Milu

Revolutionary development occurred in cricket through the One-Day game which came into the scene in the early sixties in England when crowds were decreasing alarmingly even in the Ashes Series. In 1950 the number of crowds witnessing cricket was 20 lakh, which reduced to 7 in the early sixties. Even players like Barrington, Trueman, Dexter, and Cowdrey were not being able to pull the crowds to the Test matches. So the English Cricket Authority tried to introduce a new model in cricket in an effort to popularies and save the game. In the late fifties they formed a commission with H S Althamas as chairman who recommended after a long study a new format of cricket with limited over one innings batting. On the basis of that an experimental tournament was held in 1962 involving four counties Liecstershire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire which was very successful.

The success of the experiment inspired the authority to arrange an official one-day tournament involving counties in 1963 in which Sussex become champions. The tournament was sponsored by the Gillette Company and named after them as "Gillette Cup" until 1980 since when it was renamed as "Natwest Bank Trophy". The matches of the tournament is of 60 overs.

Ted Dexter added some extra attraction by performing exceptionally well in the two inaugural tournaments in 1963 and 1964.

More important was that the matches went well beyond the working time which drew more and more people to the ground. The new format of the game led all to be adventurously involved to go for frequent fours and sixes, which was a new dimension and attraction to enjoy. Even ever-slow and orthodox Geoff Boycott was enthralled so much that he scored 146 in the 1965 Gillette Cup final, which was regarded as the most adventurous one-day batting for many years.

The successful innovation of Gillette Cup led the English authority to introduce two more one-day tournaments namely "John Players County League" and "Benson and Hedges Cup" in 1969 and 1972 respectively. The former one is a 40 over while the later one is 55 over one until 1995, since when it was reduced to 50. In fact these English efforts pioneered one-day cricket all over the world as England is the headquarters of all cricket management, and players from all other countries came to play English cricket and became habituated to this new format. Even more important was that crowds started returning to the cricket field which in fact led other countries to adopt one-day game in their schedules.

January 5, 1971 is the most important milestone in the history of One-day Cricket when One-day International (ODI) started in an accidental note during the Ashes Series. The third Test was rained off without a ball being bowled. In order to satisfy the disappointed Melbourne crowd an eight-ball 40-over match was arranged on the day, which could have been the fifth of the Test. Nothing but the score card can reflect the bests of the glorious part of the cricket history:

Venue: Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG)
England: 190 all out in 39.4 overs.
Australia: 191 for 5 in 34.6 overs.
Result: Australia won by 5 wickets.
Man-of-the-match: J H Edrich (England)

Since then the cricket playing nations started including ODI matches and series in their home and overseas schedules. England became the first-ever team to win a series when they defeated archrivals Australia 2-1 in 1972. Incidentally English batsman D. Amiss became the first one to hit a century in ODI in that series by scoring 103.

On-day cricket was established forever and got tremendous impetuous in 1975 when the first World Cup held as the Prudential World Cup. Great West Indian Clive Lloyd led his team to victory. But more achieved by cricket as the game created strong eagerness among all nations to think and play the game seriously. Since then every world cup had played new roles to improve the game more and more.

Australia's Channel-9 owner Kerry Packer will always be remembered as a special contributor to the development of ODI for his revolutionary efforts. His World Series Cricket commercialised the game and turned it into a recreational industry. This certainly ensured cricket to be equally competitive with other major games. As a result night cricket, coloured dresses, white ball, field restriction, slow motion, run rate etc. have all come to make cricket more and more attractive. Even the technique of the batsman or a bowler has been replaced by the "Improvisation." The third umpire introduction is also a revolutionary product of one-day cricket which has ensured justice to a great extent.

Abdur Rahman Bukhatir and his Sharjah should also be separately marked in the history of ODI as he initialled unimaginable cricket in desert in 1983 by staging first Asia Cup between India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in which India was the winner. But more importantly Sharjah gradually flourished and now become the venue for major ODI tournament. Individually it has the record to stage more ODI than any other single venue Toronto has also started to be regular ODI venue.

Bangladesh may not have achieved many victories, but our organisers have certainly done that by successfully arranging notable International tournaments. The Asia Cup was held in 1987 and is again going to be so in April 2000. The Independence Cup of 1998 and the mini World Cup titled "Wills International Cup" involving all the nine full ICC members placed Dhaka as another important venue.

One-day cricket has been more and more acceptable to the crowds because of its assurance of a result. It has adapted a few methods to ensure results even by introducing curtailed-over method. Certainly in doing so some confusion arose gradually. ICC has now adopted a Duckworth/Lewis (D/L) method of resetting the target in one-day cricket, which helps warranting a result even after having major disruptions of the game. They are still trying to improve this.

ICC and cricket authorities all over the world have started working together to globalise cricket, specially through one-day cricket. Wherever it is played now it has sponsors, management and above all crowds, who are the main attraction of all.

Modern technologies and development of mass media have also created tremendous impact. Any one of Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, England, India and Sri Lanka can win the 1999 World Cup, but one-day cricket will certainly step a lot more forward.

Source :: Daily Star (https://www.dailystarnews.com/)