The former head coach of the Indian cricket team, Ravi Shastri, computed that the ODI format must be shortened to prevent it from diminishing.
Ben Stokes’s early retirement from One Day International cricket has put this extended format’s future at stake. There have been many concerns recently from senior players like Wasim Akram, who said that ODI cricket must be scrapped from the cricket calendar as the format is dying, and it seems that it is just a kind of a drag.
Shahid Afridi suggested that the overs must be deducted from 50 to 40 in the ODI format. He also mentioned that the interest of this format is going down. Due to the rise of more T20 Leagues, fans enjoy watching the shorter form more. Shastri, then imitating Afridi’s words, stated that shortening the span of ODIs would work, giving the examples from the 1983 World Cup when 60 overs were played per innings.
“One-day cricket has become quite boring now. I would suggest to cut ODI cricket from 50 overs to 40 overs in order to make it entertaining,” Shahid Afridi told during his interview after Stokes’ retirement.
“There is no harm in shortening the span of the game. When one-day cricket started, it was of 60 overs. When we won the World Cup in 1983, it was 60 overs. After that, people thought that 60 overs were a bit too long. People found that span of overs between 20 to 40 hard to digest. So they reduced it from 60 to 50. So years have gone by now since that decision so why not reduce it from 50 to 40 now. Because you got to be forward-thinking and evolve. It stayed for 50 for too long,” Shastri said.
Test cricket has achieved more consideration than the ODI format due to which ODIs cricket format is falling down. The players also say that it has become very tiring to play this format. It has therefore been a huge concern to look after this issue before this format completely looses its interest.
