Since the beginning of 2015 (when England put a focus on white ball cricket) England have had 732 days of scheduled international cricket. The next most is India with 639 days. Sri Lanka come in third with 589 days.

If England hadn’t played a single ODI since 2015, they still would have had international cricket scheduled on 595 days. If you remove the 80 T20is as well they’re still ahead of Pakistan, New Zealand, Bangladesh and only three days behind South Africa.

Removing bilateral ODIs but leaving the World Cup surely runs the risk of devaluing the World Cup, doesn’t it assume a kind of exhibition status if most of the top teams haven’t played at international level since the last tournament. Further given the lack of domestic matches played by most internationals these days they wouldn’t exactly be well practiced either…

This is a really excellent summary and reflects my thoughts exactly – the 50 over game exists by accident but has also (by accident) acquired some prestige, thanks to the World Cup and the hybrid factors KC discussed.

I wonder if administrators and broadcasters could lean into that in the marketing a bit more? At the moment, it feels like it’s promoted more or less the same as T20 (fast-paced, unstuffy, open to non-traditional fans) but the format might have more of an identity if it was presented as more of a prestige event? You could play less frequently, orient matches more around world cups, drop music and pyrotechnics and adopt more classic style kits? Just a thought.

No. I literally used all the words I knew at the time to write that comment. Since then I’ve learned a few more, which I’ve used to write this comment. But now I’ve run out of words again, so I’ll have to…

I have long suggested that ODI Cricket would be squeezed by the emergence of T20 cricket. Apart from the World Cup, which I still believe to be an excellent format/tournament, I’d hardly notice or care if it stopped completely amongst the test playing nations.

But for the development of the game in associate nations the ODI format is hugely valuable and important, I feel. Likewise for the progress of professional women’s cricket internationally and domestically.

In participation cricket, the one day match (usually 40 to 50 overs a side) is the longer form of cricket in most parts of the world – only Australia has an amateur tradition of multi-day cricket in local leagues, often played over more than one weekend.

But returning to ODIs amongst test playing nations, the bilateral series seem, to me, to be an almost meaningless add on. The “qualification for World Cup” argument breaks down very quickly for me – the top six to eight teams from the previous World Cup could auto-qualify while the others have to play in some qualification tournaments along with associate nations, which would increase profile for the associates and have a more obvious meaning in themselves as mini-tournaments.

Do you think you could expand on this a bit Bert?

Test cricket is cricket, in the way it was intended to be played, and the way in which it developed over the decades. It turned out that to play a proper game of cricket, with all the ups and downs and ins and outs that would need, was going to need at least thirty hours on the pitch. Meanwhile, all other sports were getting themselves over and done with inside two hours.

I reiterate – ODI cricket was not designed to be Cricket-For-The-Football-Fan. It wasn’t designed to be anything. From a spectator’s point of view, it still requires the same all-day commitment that a test does.

T20, when that came along, was designed to be Cricket-For-The-Football-Fan. And to a large extent, that’s what it has become. Bear in mind that I’m not suggesting that cricket fans and football fans aren’t to a large extent the same people. But sometimes you just want a couple of hours at the ground, a match done and dusted. ODI cricket could never provide this.

So what for thirty years was referred to as “the short form” of the game is no longer that. Neither is it the long form. If it didn’t exist, there would be no need to invent it. It’s a hybrid, a cross-breed that managed to be born before one of its parents. It’s a time-travelling mongrel, to use the common phrase.

And then there’s the World Cup, which ruins all of those arguments. The World Cup is the only time that ODI cricket becomes a sport in its own right, instead of a warm-up / warm-down from the other formats. If anything is going to save ODI cricket, it’s the World Cup. It still feels… serious. The T20 World Cup has an element of sevens rugby about it, a bit of fun in the sun that nobody really takes seriously. The test championship is still in its infancy. In all parts of the world, the phrase “The World Champions” means exclusively the ODI world champions.

I hope it does survive. As a fan more of the longer game, I like its tactics and its sense of balance, both (IMO) missing from T20. I know that ODI specialists have been a thing for some years, but it still feels like a shorter game for test players, rather than a longer game for T20 players. Control and pressure are as important as naked skill. Required Run Rates creep this way and that; teams drift into winning or losing situations by way of tight bowling or nurdleworthy batting. It’s a one-day test match, not an extended T20 (not least because an extended T20 would need at least thirty players a side).