Overs limited, thrills unlimited!

Making merry after victory their first Pakistan supporters enjoying to the utmost with their victory – their fist major success in Sharjah with Javed Meiandad doing the honours with last ball six.

Jubilant Indian players drench skipper Sunil Gavaskar in champagne after they achieved victory.. India has had considerable success in the one day game.

Aussie revival – and Border and his men celebrate after beating England in Reliance World Cup in Calcutta

Happy at victory – an incredible last ball six from Javed Miandad gave Pakistan victory in Sharjah and it was thrilling for Pakistan.

In the fast paced world, one-day cricket has caught the fancy of the followers, though the older generation may bemoan the loss of artistic game of the five-day variety.

The one-day game is a rage in all the cricket playing countries now. A game can be decided in a little over six hours, or even less sometimes. The one-day game has been studied by all and it has become the most looked forward to game of the fans.

Instant and fast

How times have changed! If the marathon of the sports world - the game of cricket - has come to resemble a metric mile now, then maybe the day is not far off when it will be packaged as a sprint to help suit the tastes of impatient sports fans around the globe.

The cricket fans might well say that the game has changed beyond recognition, that the fabled romance of the game has gone, and the essential purity is lost and the soul has been sacrificed because of the expediency of the participants. The participants have to think a bit and see as to who has changed? What has changed? Man or the game? Man's tastes or the way the game is played?

New lease

Inded, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the longer brand of traditional cricket has found a new lease of life, thanks to the abbreviated version of the game. In how many cricket playing nations today, can Test cricket survive without the support drawn from the one-day game? Take for example-India, how many business houses will come forward to sponsor a Test series if it was not supplemented by a one-day international series?

The sheer, mind-boggling pace of late 20th century life does not allow much scope for Victorian pastimes. The present day man does not have the patience of his early century predecessor and he wants everything here and in quick time. When he goes to a game on a certain day, he wants a decision on the same day. Not an a twilight time on the following day.

After all, this is an age when almost everyone has a finger on the fast-forward button. People are happy to get through with a three-hour movie in one hour on the video screen. Get on with it, is the chorus of the rage in which we live.

And cricket itself is certainly getting on with it. What started as an accident, almost an after - thought, on a soggy new year in Melbourne in the 1970-71 Australia - England series has now become a major attraction in the world of cricket. The one-day internationals, the first of which was played to appease frustrated spectators after the third Test of the 1970-71 series had to be abandoned owning to racing are indeed the bread and butter of the modern game today.

Those, then, were days (the early 70s) when one-day stuff was not even the icing on the cake. The best of players could very well refuse to acknowledge their existence and still make a great name, and a living for themselves.

The new game did not really catch the fancy of the fan until the 1975 Prudential World Cup. The drama and the excitement that the first major international limited overs championship not only won over a lost of suspecting followers but conclusively converted the lay fan.

Excitement galore

What followed was the age of innovation in the game. Night cricket, white ball, black sight screen, coloured clothing .....a revolution was on. The players themselves had to make major adjustments in technique, in tactics, in mental altitudes .... in just about everything. The angled bat despatching the ball, airborne, through the vacant slips may not be a pretty sight but that is a price that the batsman and the spectator alike have to play for the condensed form of excitement.

There was, of course, a bigger price to be paid in that the younger cricketers weaned on the limited overs game fell for too short when it came to playing the conventional type of cricket - and consequently Test cricket itself suffered from a lack of genuinely classy players.

But the process was irreversible. The thrill - a - minute stuff was irreversible to the fans and they turned out in large number at major international matches even while support was going down for Test cricket. Meanwhile, the shocked purist continued to bemoan the increasing popularity of Heavy Metal Rock Cricket at the expense - or so he believed - of the classical concert stuff. But the one - thing the purist and most of us, should ask ourselves, is this: Who are we do determine, what type of cricket people should go out and see? Instant cricket will indeed flourish if that this what the majority of the fans want.

And, it must be believed that the limited overs game is "here to stay". The limited overs game is here to RULE.