A series of 50-over games have been played before full houses, people have been pestering others for tickets, queues have routinely appeared and balls have been cut off from telecasts. Cricket must be in good health.

But it wasn’t meant to be. In the afterglow of the Twenty20 World Cup, the word of mouth circuit was freely distributing obits of the 50-over game; the only people I heard were those saying they only watched the first ten and the last ten overs because the rest didn’t count anyway.

50 overs cricket was being put in the same bus as orkut and ghastly rap music and singers in caps. Not for the first time have we underestimated the resilience of sport.

Test cricket dies every season and re-appears in fairly robust health the next. The stands may not be full but people know the scores, great performances are lauded, victories are celebrated and statistics greedily devoured.

Test cricket is now the connoisseurs’ product, having received a shot in the arm with the arrival of 50-over cricket and some bold Australian thinking.

To my mind, the reason Test cricket will never die is because it gives people the opportunity of fighting back.

A mistake is not the end of the world, players stand firm against the tide and sometimes turn it back with old-fashioned grit.

Test cricket is not retro, it is still contemporary and even modern cricketers look forward to playing it.

Tradition is not dead. It rarely goes.

Young men and women still ask parents for permission before they get married.

So will 50-over cricket become the sandwich between the alluring tradition of Test cricket and the youthful exuberance of 20-20?

Is yesterday’s new kid on the block today’s middle-aged parent? Will it need to reinvent itself? Or, as we have seen, do we just let things lie and call the bluff of those that want change every morning?

I believe the fear of the bite is worse than the bite itself. 50-over cricket is not in immediate danger as long as there is a home country involved.

Two teams playing in a third country are likely to have empty stands as a backdrop, but add the drama of a home team playing the visitors and there is still some value to be had.

The real test will come in long drawn out tournaments like the tri-series in Australia where a minimum of 14 matches will be played over a month.

But with far too much at stake, nobody can allow 50 overs cricket to die. With a hundred overs, four drinks breaks and a long mid-innings break, it is an advertiser’s dream.

If audiences in 50 overs cricket start dwindling the game will lose too much, to the extent that its financial position could get threatened, and so I won’t be surprised if they begin tinkering with it a bit if they need to.

The power plays are now accepted and the super sub was an excellent addition that wasn’t understood enough and sadly discarded when all it needed was one amendment.

The idea that appeals the most to me is, at some time in the future, to convert 50 overs cricket into two innings of 25 overs each.

It will provide the drama of a smaller match but build in the additional excitement of having to make good a poor first innings.

Conditions will be more even for both teams (the dew in a day-night game will affect both teams since each will get 25 overs in the evening), the toss will give the captain more to think about and the commercial side will be well taken care of. It is an idea that has emerged from Australia and I first read of it in an article by John Buchanan.

It is tailor made for the sub-continent even though at the moment it is no more than a first draft.

It will need to be refined (how do you build in a rain interruption for example?) but it is a thrilling first draft.

But just as a player needs to be given an opportunity to fail, and therefore to succeed, before being dropped, so too must 50 overs cricket.

For all that you know players might re-invent things in the middle overs, batsmen may take more chances, bowlers may take more wickets and it might all become very exciting.

But it is nice to know that should it suffer, 50 overs cricket has a very enticing 50 overs cricket alternative.