Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid

Watching cricket from my couch last week reinforced my opinion that the Twenty20 game has pushed one-day internationals off the radar for all but diehard cricket fans.

The MLC (Major League Cricket), which is the USA franchise of T20 competition, had been running since mid-June and had reached the playoffs, with the title decider played out last Sunday (NZT).

Six franchises with heavy Indian Cricket League footprints battled out the fourth MLC title over the last five weeks.

While the 30-odd games were beamed into a massive audience in India and other Asian cricket playing nations, the ground spectators were sparse, except for the MLC Grand Final which attracted more than 10,000 fans.

Fifty-odd years ago, test and first-class cricket, played over four and five days, was the staple of the game.

It is interesting to look back to what drove the beginning of one-day and T20 cricket.

One Day Internationals (ODIs) began as an afterthought, on January 5, 1971, during a test match between Australia and England at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground).

Persistent rain fell through the first three days, and to satisfy the frustrated fans, officials abandoned the test and substituted a one-off limited-overs match. The game consisted of 40 eight-ball overs, which the Aussies won by five wickets.

Such was the success of the game that it led to the first World Cup in 1975.

The then fast-paced format came of age with the creation of Kerry Packer’s rebel World Series Cricket.

It was all about television rights to the game, with the Nine Network owner taking on the establishment.

Packer turned his rebel competition into a visual spectacle, with coloured uniforms, white balls for better visibility and floodlit day-night matches, which remain today.

By contrast, T20 cricket was a commercial decision by the English Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 to counter falling county match attendances.

The ECB boldly planned 20-over-per-side matches that would be over in three hours. Few could have predicted how T20 cricket would revolutionise the game.

Back to last week’s head-to-head viewing battle between ODI and T20 cricket.