Cricket a victim of its own success

The announcement of a 100-ball form of cricket is yet more evidence that the glorious game is splitting into two forms: the classical and the popular. The former, Test cricket, is a codified, cultivated game played over five days and four long innings. However, the classical game is dying in its pads. English county teams, which play the longer form, often get fewer spectators in a season than big football clubs get for one game.

What are thriving are the popular shorter versions of cricket, such as the one-day game and Twenty20. These can be batting slugfests or target practice for pistol-quick bowling. Less treasured is the skill of building an innings and arranging the field to test a batter’s weaknesses. These are losses, aesthetic and otherwise, but the gain is popularity: 120-million people watched India’s domestic 2016 Twenty20 final.

It did not have to be this way. Cricket became a victim of its own success: Sky bought the television rights and the game disappeared from terrestrial television. Today it has never been less popular.

Instead of invigorating the classical form of the game, the England and Wales Cricket Board has created a novel 100-ball format and a new eight-team, city-based tournament. It has decided to submit cricket to the cult of the unsentimental, prepared to reinvent the game to save it by pulling in a billion pounds — mostly from Sky, but with the BBC to reach a wider audience. London, May 8