Cricket audiences now go for instant action

By A. C. de Silva

CRICKET: Cricket audiences have changed. Blame the pace of modern life, the inescapable fact is that the average spectator these days lacks the patience of his predecessors.

He demands instant action and a guaranteed result. This, very probably, explains the remarkable growth and current success of limited-over cricket and more particularly, one-day internationals.

It is not so very long since such internationals were regarded by the players concerned as an aggravation after a lengthy series of the real Test match business, and by the majority of cricket followers as a gimmick with which they could not quite come to terms. The one-day international had no history, no category, no obvious meaning.

Perhaps it would soon go away? But it didn’t. Like an out-of-control plant it has grown at a near alarming rate, spreading its branches around the cricketing world and, in some quarters, achieving the unthinkable of usurping Test matches themselves in terms of public interest.

Fine example

So many international matches are played nowadays particularly during the English winter, that it is difficult for all but the keenest cricket statisticians to keep abreast of even the bare bones of the results.

All those associated with the game have acclimatised to the modern fixture set-up so thoroughly that it is hard to recall accurately the day when the one-day internationals had no place in the calendar.

It seems inconceivable that the decade of the 1970s was actually underway before the first such game was played, stranger still that, far from being a masterly stroke of long-term planning by the cricketing administrators, that inaugural event took place only by accident, as an after-thought and a substitute.

The starting point

The cause of it all was a desperately wet New Year in Melbourne during the 1970-71 series between Australia and England.

Ray Illingworh’s side, on its way to regaining the Ashes, was kept in the pavilion for three days at which point a decision was taken to abandon the third Test and controversially, add an extra Test to the end of the programme.

At the same time, largely to give the frustrated holiday-making spectators some crumbs of consolation after their watery wait, a momentous and far-reaching proposal to play a 40-overs-a-side international on what would have been the final day of the Test was adopted.

The officials, who agreed upon this happy compromise, doubtless imagined the 40-over game would be seen nothing more than an exhibition match of the type which had been played on a number of previous occasions. It may even be true that, if some of them had possessed even an inkling of what it would lead to, the suggestion would have been hastily withdrawn.

But the match went ahead on January 5th 1971 with the rules under which the John player League was already operating in England.

Although England launched its partnership with Prudential, in the shape of a regular home series of internationals, in 1972, other countries remained sceptical. Only New Zeland staged a game, fitting a single fixture against Pakistan between the second and third Tests of its 1973 series.

This was also breaking new ground in being the first one-day international staged on a Sunday and although Pakistan was beaten, its captain, Intikhab Alam, showed some grasp of the more positive approach demanded by this short form of the game by opening the batting himself.

Tactics, in the early days, had certaintly not been mastered. The new game needed learning and Australia, however, was one of the countries that learnt fast as it demonstrated by scoring two convincing victories over New Zealand in the first mini-series of one-day matches between these near neighbours.

The matches were played at Dunedin and Christchurch on the last two days of March 1974, and were notable for two thrilling innings by Ian Chappell, the Australian captain.

Chappell and his younger brother, Greg, were so dominant in the second of the games that New Zealand skipper Bev Congdon bowled his seven permitted overs for the mortifying figures of one for 77.

A more poignant highlight of these games was the unvailing hundred by the much-liked New Zealand wicket-keeper Ken Wadsworth, his only one hundred for his country. Wadsworth was to die of cancer two years later at the age of 29.

New Zealand’s part in the promotion of limited-over internationals cannot be strassed too highly as, apart from England, it was only the country to schedule them against touring teams on a regular basis before the first of two events which were to entrench internationals in the calendar of all major cricket-playing nations, the 1975 prudential World Cup.

Fast growth

The acceleration was dramatic. By the end of 1974, as English cricket put the finishing touches to its plans for the jamboree that was to come the following summer, a total of only 15 internationals had been played around the world. Five years and two World Cups later, the number had swollen to 82 and in the next three years it was virtually to double.

New Zealand and England continued to stage their now established matches but in 1976-77 there were two more important breakthroughs, with the first one-day internationals being held in both Pakistan and the West Indies.

Sialkot was the venue for Pakistan’s home debut on the limited-over stage and after its brave exploits in the first World Cup, when it was within one wicket of upsetting the West Indians, it doubtless started warm favourites to beat the more experienced New Zealanders.

In one of the finest finishes in the game’s still brief history, however, New Zealand hung on by one run.

Wasin Bari scoring only two from the last ball of the match when it needed four.

West Indians had stirred their own public to great enthusiasm for this fresh and exciting cricket by their triumph in the World Cup, and although they staged the inaugural international away from their established Test venues, in a new sporting complex at Berbice in Gayana, it attracted a crowd of 15,000.

They went home happy after Pakistan had been beaten by four wickets in the single match for the Guiness Trophy. This sponsorship was to be short-lived.

It was repeated in 1978 for a two-match series against Australia, but thereafter abandoned, which may have had something to do with the general chaos surrounding a tour played amid the unparalleled rumour and recrimination of the Packer years.

This is not a period which can be lightly skipped past World Series Cricket which attracted many of the best cricketers in the world, it was promoted and publicised in a fashion which cricket had never previously attempted and its one-day cricket, as opposed to its so-called ‘super Tests’, was very successful.

The reason for this was partly the promotion, but equally important was the introduction of some bold and brash experiments.

Attractive innovation

Night cricket, played in coloured clothing, with a white ball and a black sight-screen , was the single greatest innovation of the episode. It still thrives in Australia, as it might in the rest of the world if climate allowed.

Even the players, so often resistant to change, relish, occasionally, the unique atmosphere of floodlit game, while for Australia spectator it has become a social night out, rather than sinply a sporting day, but expanding the potential audience.

Then it was refreshing to see the impending monopoly of West Indian victories interrupted by India.

On the face of it, India had provided the most unlikely success stories in limited-overs cricket, with the game based traditionally on solid batting guileful spin bowling and often non-too-athletic fielding in the mid-1980, despite that, it had sufficiently well-balanced one-day side to score a fascinating treble: winning first against all odds in the 1983 World Cup, then taking the so-called ‘World Championship of Cricket’ in Australia in early 1985 and, immediately afterwards, winning a four-nation tournament on the latest stage for authorised internationals - Sharjah.

Sri Lanka, still a new Test-playing nation, has also won the World Cup and Sri Lanka are also playing a lot of cricket these days.

They are also staging regular internationals and Zimbabwe too are bound to catch-up in the race to stage the limited-over games.