England all-rounder Ben Stokes' retirement from One Day Internationals (ODIs) has stirred the pot about the relevance of the format in the sport. After India head coach Ravi Shastri slammed the cricket calendar, especially the bilateral ODIs between two nations, Pakistan's great Wasim Akram has now called for scrapping the 50-over version altogether.
“Him deciding that he is retiring from one-day cricket is quite sad but I agree with him. Even as a commentator one-day cricket is just a drag now, especially after T20. I can imagine as a player. 50 overs, 50 overs, then you have to pre-game, post-game, the lunch game,” Wasim Akram said on The Telegraph's Vaughany and Tuffers Cricket Club podcast.
“T20 is kind of easier, four hours the game is over. The leagues all around the world, there is a lot more money – I suppose this is part and parcel of the modern cricket. T20 or Test cricket. One-day cricket is kind of dying,” Wasim Akram added.
“It is quite tiring for a player to play one-day cricket. After T20, one-day cricket seems it is going for days. So players are focussing on more shorter format. And longer format obviously [with] Test cricket,” Wasim Akram noted.
Wasim Akram said ODIs were fast losing their relevance in South Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and people no longer wanted to watch with T20 leagues getting more and more popular.
“I think so. In England you have full houses. In India, Pakistan especially, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, South Africa, one-day cricket you are not going to fill the stadiums.”
“They are doing it just for the sake of doing it. After the first 10 overs, it's just ‘OK, just go a run a ball, get a boundary, four fielders in and you get to 200, 220 in 40 overs' and then have a go last 10 overs. Another 100. It’s kind of run-of-the-mill,” Wasim Akram explained.
“There's a battle within the battle in Test cricket. I always preferred Test matches. One-day used to be fun but Test matches were where you were recognized as a player where people still pick you for the world XIs. OK money matters – I understand where they are coming from – but they should also remember if they want to be recognized as one of the greats of the game,” Wasim Akram concluded.
Earlier, the star England all-rounder Ben Stokes blamed the sport's crammed calendar for his decision to quit the 50-over format.
“As hard as a decision as this was to come to, it’s not as hard dealing with the fact I can’t give my teammates 100 per cent of myself in this format anymore. The England shirt deserves nothing less from anyone who wears it,” the all-rounder said in a statement.
“Three formats are just unsustainable for me now,” he said. “Not only do I feel that my body is letting me down because of the schedule and what is expected of us, but I also feel that I am taking the place of another player who can give Jos and the rest of the team their all. It's time for someone else to progress as a cricketer and make incredible memories like I have over the past 11 years,” Ben Stokes pointed out.
“I will give everything I have to Test cricket, and now, with this decision, I feel I can also give my total commitment to the T20 format. I would like to wish Jos Buttler, Matthew Mott, the players and the support staff every success going forward. We have made great strides in white-ball cricket over the past seven years, and the future looks bright,” Ben Stokes opined.
“I just feel like there is too much cricket rammed in for people to play all three formats now. It is a lot harder than it used to be. I look back to when I used to do all three and it didn't feel like it was as jam-packed,” he claimed.
“I think the schedule and everything that is expected of us these days, for me personally at the moment, it feels unsustainable. We're not cars where you can just fill us up with petrol or diesel and then let us go. It does have this effect on you, the amount of playing and travelling we do – it all adds up,” the England Test captain commented.
“The schedule at the moment is all very jam-packed. It's asking a lot of the players to keep putting in 100 per cent of their efforts every time they walk out on the field for their country.”
“If you want the best product out there, you obviously want the best players on the field [but] teams are now looking at their squads and saying, ‘where can we give players a break?'” he signed off.
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