If this is goodbye, let's go out on a high

ODI cricket's uncertain future, Ian Foster as the Riverboat gambler, PLUS: Your chance to win my new book! ($)

New Zealand’s huddle is dwarfed by the vastness of Narendra Modi Stadium. Getty Images/ Gareth Copley

To continue a theme that has been percolating in the lead up to CWC23: Could this be the last meaningful ODI world cup?

Take Jarrod Kimber’s Sports Almanac: “Will this be the last ODI World Cup?”

Take Jimmy Neesham!

“I struggled for a couple of years after that final because I didn’t really feel like the matches we were playing mattered. That’s no disrespect to the opposition or anything but I would be out in the middle going: ‘I don’t really care.’ There’s no context to a lot of matches, there’s no pressure, there’s a lot of, like, whatever games.”

Take Cricinfo’s Osman Samiuddin: “Will this be the last World Cup that is this big a deal?”

Take Paul Ford on this week’s BYC: “Three years ago 80 percent of players said the 50-over World Cup was the most important cricket tournament in the world, the recent survey result that was down to 50%. At the end of the day the players and the commercial money - sponsors and sporting partners - are going to go where the eyeballs are… we can see it’s going to be going down the T20 lane.”

Or take this thread by cricket business reporter K Sriniwas Rao (also referred to in Sports Almanac).

Rao’s argument centres on economics, citing the decreasing appetite for broadcasting rights of ODI cricket outside of a full-strength India playing a legacy opponent such as Pakistan, Australia or England. Even when a full-strength Indian side is playing an ODI, between-overs ad slots have been an increasingly hard sell, with advertisers only wanting slots close to milestones or “peak” action - that is to say, the last 10-15 overs of the match.

Even the most optimistic of cricket enthusiasts would concede that bilateral ODIs, once the summer staple, are going the way of the fax machine and competitive marching.