MELBOURNE: Charismatic Usman Khawaja, a batsman for Australia, feels that the current 50-over-a-side One-Day International format "is just that little bit too lengthy currently" and wants it reduced to a 40-over-a-side format to eliminate that "little gap" in the middle overs.
Khawaja, who has played in 50 Tests and 40 ODIs, said, "I would appreciate one-day cricket more if it was 40 overs. My batting performances during the 2021/22 Ashes at home completely destroyed England. I would, truly. When they were playing 40-over cricket in England a few years ago, I participated in Pro40s. The 35-year-old batter was reported as saying, "I enjoyed it," in the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.
"I just feel like one-day cricket, if it could be 40 overs, I guess that would just take out the middle portion and it would just be one-day cricket. T20 cricket's amazing, Test cricket is the pinnacle (perfect). When you reach 25 overs, you glance up and realise that there are only 15 overs left. Okay, let's start over. So you don't experience that brief lull. That's the one thing I have against one-day cricket, Khawaja said.
With the proliferation of domestic T20 leagues throughout the world and the popularity of the T20 World Cup, whose 2022 edition will begin in less than a week in Australia, there has been a notion recently that ODI cricket is dying. The ODI World Cup, which India will host in 2019, is anticipated to be a huge success, but experts assert that there is no disputing that interest in the format is dwindling.
Adam Zampa, an Australian spinner, thinks 50-over cricket needs some rule changes to be more interesting. Zampa, who is in a race against time to be fit for the T20 World Cup, said that he feels there are roughly 10 middle overs in one-day cricket that either need to be scrapped or something has to be done with them, something a bit more entertaining.
"Or, there are bonuses or more free hits or something similar in between overs 20 and 30. Make it a little bit more intriguing, he said. Aaron Finch, the captain of Australia's T20I team and a recent ODI cricket retiree due to bad form, disagrees.
When a World Cup is 12 months away, "the same question keeps coming up every couple of years," Finch told ABC. People strive to make it relevant, but when the World Cup comes around, it will once again be bigger than Ben-Hur, and another format will be put on the chopping board.
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