Over and out for the pointless 50 overs

[King]

Cricket's 50-over format belongs to the past and should be permanently replaced by Twenty20, which is infinitely more dramatic, more flavoursome and more subtle than its cumbersome progenitor, writes Jim White. More... Over and out for the pointless 50 overs By Jim White Last Updated: 1:38am BST 14/07/2007 Page 1 of 2 Have your say Read comments Earlier this week, Mark Nicholas was bemoaning on these pages the fact that, in all the coverage of last weekend's bonanza of summer sport, England's one-day international with the West Indies barely got page room, squeezed out by Silverstone, Wimbledon and the Tour de Londres. But there is a simple reason for the lack of interest: as the recent World Cup proved, the 50-over game has become one of the least attractive, dullest, most pointless sporting events. Watching a match like last Saturday's is to see the past and know it doesn't work. Twenty20 is now the superior form of the fore-shortened game. It is not only the future of the one-day thrash, already it is the present. Not just commercially more marketable, as a spectacle T20 is infinitely more dramatic, more flavoursome and, counter-intuitively, more subtle than its cumbersome progenitor. This is because in T20, every ball counts. For the bowler, there is no longer the option of hoping to contain with a few chucked somewhere near the off stump. With only 24 deliveries at his disposal, each one is so valuable it has to be thought-through and calculated. Equally the batsmen and fielders cannot afford to operate at anything less than full throttle. This creates an intensity completely missing from the 50-over game, with its long periods of pointless prevaricating. Of course, it is nothing compared to the complexities of a Test match, but as a thrash, T20 is the only way forward. Not least because, as those poor souls who had to sit through that interminable futile run chase at Trent Bridge will appreciate, when England are playing, you know they won't take all day being defeated.