Twenty20 May be the End of One-day Cricket

THE Big Bash is the greatest entertainment to hit cricket since, well, one-day internationals in the 1970s.
The days when coloured clothing and light towers lit up the night, when queues snaked for literally miles outside the MCG and SCG, and when fences were pulled down at the WACA because the "sold out" signs had gone up.

When microphones bashed out songs between overs, and canny canines and pop stars weaved their magic at the intervals.

Same game, same popularity, same gimmicks, same television ratings to drool over, same queues and public adoration.

The only difference is the Big Bash goes for 40 overs and is completed within four hours, a much faster and more frenzied version of the 50 overs a side format that provided Kerry Packer with day and night live television content.
Interesting then, that fans and the cricketers are suggesting that of the three formats of the game to take a backseat, the first in line is the 50 over games.

Three decades of the same smash and grab has worn thin (or perhaps too long).

The constants of the game are Tests and the Sheffield Shield, the backbone of this nation's cricket that defy time, change, wavering public opinion.

So it is interesting to note that Mike McKenna, a marketing guru whose sporting background is six years at the Essendon Football Club before joining Cricket Australia in April of 2005, has a mandate to determine the future of the Big Bash in Australia.

CA chief executive James Sutherland has handed him a blank piece of paper and asked him to be ambitious to find a specific and separate space in the cluttered Australian cricket calendar for the Twenty20 Big Bash.

Grey hairs have blossomed on many foreheads of cricket officials since, mainly because the mandate involved being "customer driven".

In other words, what do the fans want? The answer, from considerable research that surprised nobody, is the majority want to watch cricket during the December-January holiday period.

Similar thinking in the late 1970s resulted in one-day cricket taking over many traditional dates, including the Australia Day weekend Test in Adelaide.

Today fans and players alike believe one-day games should be the first format to be down-graded.

While McKenna and his committee ponder what can be achieved to best suit the fans (including television viewers), the blank piece of paper has been screwed up many times.

Would anyone dare to suggest that Melbourne's Boxing Day Test, or the New Year Test in Sydney, be shunted aside to make way for the Big Bash?

Cricket Australia's Peter Young said McKenna had a difficult assignment because his challenge was to avoid making a decision on what is most convenient to CA and to come up with the best scenario according to customer research.

"All things being equal, the way we would prefer to do it is play the Big Bash during the December-January period when people are on holidays," Young said.

"Whether that is achievable is problematic."

The Big Bash is here to stay, and it will become an integral part of the summer, especially with eight and possibly 10 teams in the helter-skelter format. It is a hit already, attracting massive television audiences and huge crowds.

However, while it would be easy for McKenna to say the new phenomenon should suddenly take centre stage at the expense of Test cricket, he must consider equally the traditions of the game.

The wheel turns. Test cricket is vibrant in this nation, and the December-January period is the peak viewing period.

If Tests are not played then, who would be able to attend to support the traditions of the game?

Especially when they cannot be played at night, when more would attend, because of an inability to unearth an acceptable ball.

Whereas, one suggests, the Big Bash will be popular, overwhelmingly attended and a focal point of television viewers whenever it is played.