LONDON: What in cricket started out as a bit of a laugh but has since become much more serious? This isn't a trick question. It could be linked to the origins of Test cricket – England v Australia, the five-day match, players switching allegiance across countries, jokes about Australians putting English cricket's “ashes” into an urn. This is what turned a bit of fun into a very serious game for nearly 150 years, but it's not the answer.
Another possibility is the beginning of limited-overs cricket. The first so-called international limited-overs match was played on 5 January 1971 in Melbourne between Australia and England. The first three days of the Test match were rained out and the authorities faced a huge loss of revenue. They decided to abandon the match, change it to a one-day, one-off match and add a seventh Test at the end of the series. This came as a big surprise and reluctance to the players, who had not been consulted.
The English players seemed more interested in being asked to play the extra matches and being paid. They were accustomed to the benefits of limited-overs cricket, which had begun in professional cricket in England and Wales in 1963 as a response to falling attendances and defensive play. Sponsored by Gillette and commercially successful, other Test match-playing countries showed no interest in the format. The Australian authorities' decision to stage the matches was no laughing matter among the players, but neither was the Australian Cricket Board, which took the need to generate revenue seriously.
The fifth day of the Test season saw the one-day game played in the Australian standard format of 40 overs, eight balls each. The teams were called “England XI” and “Australia XI”. It was reported as a “One-Day Test Match”. Players and officials were skeptical of the match, but the 46,000-strong crowd rejected it.
It was an eye-opening moment for the Australian Cricket Board, with chairman Sir Donald Bradman declaring, “You have witnessed history being made”. The match was won by Australia, and although the England captain admitted that his players had not taken the game seriously, the players were relieved to be playing some cricket after long hours in the dressing room, and they also received £50 as their participation fee.
In this rather morose and volatile climate, history was made without many of the participants realising the significance of the event. Years later, one Australian player recalled his amazement that a match they had thought of as “a bit of a joke” had become part of cricket history.
A revolution was underway. The first Women's One-Day World Cup was held in 1973, followed by the men's in 1975. World Series Cricket, launched by Kerry Packer in Australia in 1977, shook up the cricket establishment and made them realise the commercial opportunities that the format offered. Australia, England and the West Indies were dominant at the time. India never took the format, often dubbed “pyjama cricket” because of its coloured uniforms, seriously.
All that changed in 1983 when India not only took the format seriously but also the Indian team, inspired by captain Kapil Dev, won the One-Day World Cup beating England, Australia and the West Indies. In two months, the fascination with limited-overs cricket and its heroes changed forever. Triangular and square tournaments were born across the Indian subcontinent and in Sharjah. What was once a joke became a fun-loving and serious commercial endeavour.
But this is still not the answer to the original question. In the early 20th century, a combination of declining attendances in England and Wales, poor performance of the national team, and an imminent ban on tobacco advertising in the sport created a new crisis. Based on focus groups and surveys, the England and Wales Cricket Board concluded that the public wanted cricket with wider appeal in terms of both playing time and delivery format. Shortened over formats such as 15 eight-ball or 20 six-ball overs had been used in weekday evening club cricket cups for decades. In 2002, the Board proposed a new Twenty20 Cup competition for the professional game.
It was given the thumbs-up by the county cricket club and launched in May 2003 on a rooftop garden in central London, with members of an instantly forgotten pop group appearing in a cheesy photo shoot. They were accompanied by the captains of the two county teams playing in the first match, one of whom admitted he was disgusted by the result of the photo shoot, and also said that the first match on 13 June 2003 was “a bit of fun”. It was not taken too seriously, as it was generally thought not to last.
How wrong were they? A new chapter in cricket history had been written, but no one realised its importance. Counties adopted more and more flamboyance to entertain the new breed of spectators, who responded favourably, and the format continued for longer than many had expected. India was slow to adopt the format again, but when they did, it transformed cricket and the subcontinent effectively took over the new format.
The impact has reverberated across other formats, spurring the game's global expansion: the upcoming 20-team T20 World Cup will be played in the United States, and T20 cricket will be an Olympic sport in 2028. So from “a little laugh,” cricket has become a dominant format, and a commercial behemoth that poses an existential threat to longer-established formats (both of which started as “a little joke”). Cricket has the power to make fun of those who make jokes.
