More than halfway through what some thought would be a long series, the one-day international seems to be doing quite well. Stadiums in India are full, people seem quite happy to sit through fifty overs, crowds are as noisy as ever. For a patient we thought was on oxygen, the one-day international seems to be in extraordinarily robust health.

Two months ago, the critics panned another one-day series. After a hard-fought Ashes battle, England and Australia drove around the country playing each other in seven one-day games. The players said it was tiring but one team seemed more tired than the other! Again it produced full houses and it seems things are a bit like in the movie industry where big ticket films routinely get trashed by the critics and deliver good numbers at the box-office. So have columnists, commentators and critics lost touch with popular taste? Is the format under siege? Or do we need to delve deeper?

In recent times I have been lucky to be at two superbly organised, highly competitive cricket tournaments that delivered average returns at the box-office. The Champions Trophy in South Africa and the Champions League T20 produced quality cricket, some of it seriously good, but found audiences, both at the ground and in front of a television set, very choosy about which games to patronise. An England vs Australia semi-final couldn’t fill a relatively small ground at Centurion and non-home franchise games were poorly attended at the Champions League till the semi-final and the final where admission was easier than it has ever been in India.

... contd.