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The face of cricket has changed over the years. This was so because of dwindling revenues at the gates of county cricket in England. Attendance was the key, as the game was struggling to survive at first-class level.
England was the only country where a professional cricket league existed.
Thus, an experiment in 1963 to introduce a limited-over game found favour with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), custodian of the game of cricket at that time. The format consisted of limiting the number of overs bowled in an innings to 60, with a single bowler not allowed to bowl more than 12 overs.
It sparked immediate interest and attracted tremendous crowds that had the counties beaming with the sound of cash registers coming to life again.
Interestingly, the WI cricket team under Frank Worrell were on tour of England that year and won the Test series by a 3-1 margin. The WI were asked to play Sussex, which won the first limited-over competition among the counties.
WI accepted the challenge and lost. No excuses intended, but WI had just completed a long, tough tour of England and treated the game more like a fete match. Also, it was not on the schedule of games, but was added for the sake of goodwill.
Nonetheless, it was the first limited-over game the WI played against a first-class team.
Five years later, another limited-overs competition was hatched, to be played on Sundays only. The limit was 40 overs per innings. It was sponsored by the John Player cigarette company and named the Player’s Sunday League. Unlike the 60-over contest sponsored by the Gillette Company, which was a knockout tournament, this competition’s format was on a league basis.
These innovations caught on and their success made the sponsors happy.
Eventually, limited-overs cricket became so popular that it went international in 1971, giving birth to World Cup cricket in 1975, and the format was played at 60 overs per team. It was decided that like the Olympics and World Cup football, it would be contested every four years.
These were very exciting times, especially for West Indians, as they came out victorious in the first two competitions in ‘75 and ‘79.
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However, when they surprisingly lost in 1983 to India, led by Kapil Dev, it gave the Board of Control for Cricket in India the opportunity to apply and put a case to the MCC to hold the tournament in India, as defending champions. Before that the venue was in England only.
They got the OK, but a few changes had to be made to suit the new location and its geography. Instead of the lengthy days in the summer months of England, where it was quite comfortable to bowl 120 overs in the daytime with good light (this was before the advent of floodlights at night), in India it would be impossible, as daylight was lost earlier. Therefore, 50 overs became the limit per innings and has remained so since 1987, the first year of the Cricket WC outside England. And 50 overs is at present the limit for all one-day-internationals.
Again, falling revenue at the turn of the century shook up the lethargic nature of the 18 counties plus the MCC and moved them to action. The number of overs per game was reduced to 20 per innings after much expenditure was put into market research. This did the job of increasing revenue and creating other leagues worldwide, like the most popular and highly paid Indian Premier League (IPL) in India.
The revenue generated in India is fabulous and the IPL uses only popular cricketers. The Indian economy and the heights it attains, plus the love of cricket, attracted many sponsors, making the IPL not only the richest league worldwide, but the one that carries the most power over cricketers because of its very high wages.
But Indian players are banned by their board from playing in any other league, and that selfishness is squeezing the lifeblood out of world cricket.
England, Australia and India, because of their cricket wealth, only participate in five-Test series against one another, and this will stifle the improvement of cricket and the development of players to the detriment of the spirit of the game and its eventual demise through the absence of art, beauty and elegance.
The gentle grace of cricket is gradually being eroded for financial gain.
 
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