It may not really be easy to find out why, but when the 50-over World Cup returns to India, someone with an apparently clever prankster’s sense of timing somewhere gets a lot of people talking in right earnest about how it is for this country to confirm the financial viability of the supreme contest in the format which, back in 1975, gave cricket a platform for an alternate to the conventional game. People, wherever you ran into them, had parroted the line in 2011, and the message popped back up when, in one burst and blaze, World Cup 2023 was upon us, slowly to build up to a climax from which everyone will be sent home after the choreographer’s skills have been showcased to the fullest possible extent. Bubbling with patriotic fervour, people refused to go home after MS Dhoni’s team won the trophy; Nariman Point and Churchgate stayed up all night in a city which never sleeps anyway.
Well might Ahmedabad relish the same experience this time around. And why no country other than India is given the rather onerous duty of authenticating the format’s existential sustainability is perhaps a no-brainer: there are no rival candidates. India stands alone since it bankrolls the game in its multi-format variety. Thus the ODI World Cup will be obliged to keep coming back to India for it to be able to roll on, propelled by Indian cricket’s incredible wealth. ODIs are outpaced in popularity by Twenty20s, which pulled ahead partially because they were shorter, packaging entertainment compactly enough for a fan to go for a game after work and be back home in time for dinner. Also, intra-India matches, going round the land creating metropolitan, if not regional, loyalties that one-day cricket may never have thought of, are another aspect of the matter. Such leading lights of the game as Wasim Akram wanted a quiet burial of 50-over contests, preferring cricket to be split between Tests and Twenty20s.
It was not as if ODIs had ceased making money when the Indian Premier League came along but the entire marketing programme of the IPL was different from what had previously been attempted elsewhere. And there came a time when comparisons ceased right at the beginning given T20’s fast forward progress. American ideas, pushed brashly and relentlessly, altered the game’s philosophy and even technical know-how to a considerable extent. It is amazing India can patronise both, but what if T20 franchises, Tests having been as good as taken over, eye the ODI business as well for themselves if they yield the same sort of money? It is not entirely unlikely, though, for that to happen, ODIs cannot rely solely on occasional World Cups in India. That could come to be deemed a risk not worth taking.