Lillee’s pounding down like a machine,

Pascoe’s making divots in the green,

Marsh is taking wickets,

Hookesy’s clearing pickets,

And the Chappells’ eyes has got that killer gleam,

C’mon Aussie, c’mon

— Australian World Series song

It was the late 70s and cricket had suddenly found its mojo. Big boys were playing at night, and with jingles such as C’mon Aussie, c’mon playing on Channel 9, Kerry Packer’s World Series had started a revolution that would change the game forever.

But when I was growing up, I distinctly remember that Packer was not just considered a magician who transformed one-day cricket, but also a tycoon who used his money to hold the game to ransom. There were admirers back then, sure, but his position as modern one-day cricket’s father-figure came rather grudgingly, with lots of riders attached to it.

With the passage of time, the impression somehow started to change. His World Series was slowly celebrated wholeheartedly. The arguments against him started to dwindle, and anecdotes of how he always got his way became hallmarks of his conviction rather than his ruthlessness. Of all the big boys, we proclaimed that Packer was the biggest.

The similarity between what Packer did to one-dayers and what’s going on now with the emergence of T20 as the format of the future is almost uncanny — his night cricket had also started when ODIs were at a nascent stage.

But this time, criticising the importance being given to the game’s even shorter version is a very unpopular opinion. Cricket boards have started wilfully allowing players to choose what they prefer — league or country — and more abbreviations are sprouting up like weeds every day. And these — IPL, EPL, APL, PPL — are no ordinary weeds. They’re magic weeds which are slowly becoming more important than the crop they’re growing with.

... contd.