The MC makes a passionate plea to the partisan crowd to cheer the home team. They oblige, albeit briefly before the intensity drops sharply. Contrast this with a few months ago at the IPL where a sea of yellow needed no prompts and most of the Mexican Waves (get their name from the Mexico Football World Cup in 1986 where the wave was seen for the first time) were spontaneous. I’ve been to every India World Cup game at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, and I’ve never witnessed such low intensity levels from a crowd that is not just one of the most knowledgeable in India but also among the most passionate.
Shrinking attention spans
This was no ordinary game. This was India’s World Cup opener against Australia (on October 8, 2023), possibly the second most anticipated league-stage game aside from the India-Pakistan clash that was played on October 14, 2023. Many of the spectators left early or arrived late. It prompted animated discussions among my friends and fellow spectators about the future of the 50-over one-day international. The theme for the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup is ‘It takes one day’. For most viewers that tag line comes with an exclamation mark. One day or about 8 hours of cricket for a whole day may be just too much for an Instagram-first generation with shrinking attention spans.
Epic clash
Disney+ Hotstar announced that the India-Pakistan World Cup game at Ahmedabad on October 14, 2023, set a new peak concurrency record with 3.5 crore viewers tuning in. This was up from the Asia Cup clash in Sri Lanka earlier this year when 2.8 crore viewers watched the live action concurrently. Seats were sold at a premium, with black marketers making a killing on overpriced tickets. But do those numbers and hype from the India-Pakistan encounter mask a growing lack of interest in the format among viewers across the cricketing world.
ODI wave
The first ODI game happened almost by accident. It was prompted by inclement weather that resulted in an Ashes test match almost being abandoned. The organizers decided to host 40-overs-a-side (Australian 8-ball over) between England and Australia that the hosts won by 5 wickets in Melbourne in January 1971. The ODI format truly took off only after India’s surprise World Cup triumph in 1983 followed by the successful staging of the Reliance World Cup in 1987 in the subcontinent. ODIs enjoyed a great run through the 1990s and the 2000s, with popular cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar building their larger-than-life reputation with consistent success in this format.
New kid on the block
It was the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board) that first introduced the Twenty20 format in 2003. India took slightly longer to embrace the format. It started with India’s victory in the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup against arch-rivals Pakistan in South Africa in 2007 (India hasn’t won a Twenty20 World Cup since then) and then the IPL changed everything after its spectacular debut season in 2008. While ODIs never really cannibalized or eliminated interest in the conventional 5-day Test match, the Twenty20 format gradually began to eclipse 50-over cricket.
Fading attendance
Cricket fans will argue that India’s 50-over World Cup triumph in 2011 was the peak of viewer interest in the format. The decline probably began with that high. Test cricket continues to survive with sustained interest in epic clashes like the Ashes or when India faces rivals like England or Australia (India hasn’t played a test match against Pakistan since 2007) but ODI TV viewership and match attendance numbers have continued to decline across the world. From Australia’s Big Bash to the all-new ‘The Hundred’ (a new 100-ball/side league) in England, local leagues have become the preferred option for cricket fans.
Run-of-the-mill
In 2022 Jos Buttler’s England team was whitewashed by Australia in a three-match ODI series in Australia barely a week after they lifted the Twenty20 World Cup. Buttler admitted that he was “not fussed at all”. Clear evidence that bilateral 50-over games are losing relevance. Last year Wasim Akram, the second most successful ODI bowler of all time (in terms of wickets), was of the view (in an interview on the Vaughany and Tuffers Cricket Club podcast) that ICC should scrap ODI cricket completely, saying it had become ‘run-of-the-mill’. South Africa almost risked missing the 2023 World Cup when they withdrew from their ODI series in Australia scheduled for January 2023 by forsaking ODI Super League points in favour of allowing their national cricketers to play the inaugural season of the SA20 league.
The road ahead
ICC has already announced a schedule of ICC events that include the 2027 ICC Cricket World Cup and the 2031 ICC Cricket World Cup that will be hosted in South Africa (along with Zimbabwe and Namibia) and India (along with Bangladesh), respectively, but the big question is whether 50-over cricket will continue to be relevant given the falling interest in bilateral contests.
Quite a few players have opted to skip the format altogether (Ben Stokes announced his ODI retirement only to rejoin the England team for its title defence) and the intensity is missing in the players’ body language. Will we see 50-over cricket only make an appearance during the World Cup and the Champions Trophy in the future? A home World Cup win for India might give the 50-over format a much-needed shot in the arm. But will that be enough to ensure longevity for a fading format? The ICC will certainly hope so.
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