Cricket can't afford to waste the goodwill created by the World Cup

Has the World Cup saved 50-over cricket? If you attended the games, you may wonder if the question needs asking. Crowds and ratings were strong, the minnows captured the imagination, the standard of cricket innovation was often light years ahead of the last World Cup, and even for those of us who prefer the extended red-ball game, there is a tingle about knock-out action compressed into one evening, attended by a great diversity of people amped up as if for a football match, that reveals why the growing part of the cricket world is in love with it.

It will be hard to think there is any problem with one-day cricket when the MCG fills up on Sunday night for the Anzac Final, a contest between an Australian team bursting with talent and a New Zealand who have played such beguiling cricket, futuristic tactics mixed with old-school sportsmanship, that many Australians won't mind too much if the Kiwis win.

And yet, will the glow still be there when England are playing Pakistan in five ODIs in the Middle East in November? Will the West Indies' three-match ODI series in Sri Lanka in November feel like it is riding the World Cup wave? Zimbabwe host India and New Zealand for six ODIs in July and August; the focus and hype of the next World Cup might seem a lot more than four years away. Indian television's insistence on the Reasonably Sizeable Three playing 50-over cricket among themselves in future years will doubtless bring back that tautological description: the meaningless one-day series.

The first people who can curate the one-day game are those who have done it in the past six weeks: the players themselves. I count myself lucky to have been at the SCG to see AB de Villiers' unbeaten 162 against the West Indies, Steve Smith's batting in the knock-outs in Adelaide and Sydney, Glenn Maxwell's and Kumar Sangakkara's contrasting genius in the Australia-Sri Lanka match. This is not just a shot of adrenaline in the withered arm of a semi-comatose cricket camp follower. Some friends visiting from America wanted to see a cricket match while they were here, and went to West Indies-South Africa with American-born relatives who have lived in Australia for decades without ever taking the slightest interest in cricket. They came out of it dazzled. When you see Jerome Taylor taking a one-handed catch running along the rope in front of the Bradman Stand, or the ferocity of a Dale Steyn bouncer carrying to a wicketkeeper 45 metres away, not to mention de Villiers' transcendent talent, these are things not easily forgotten.

Twenty20's gift to the one-day game has been obvious, although the innovative shots and rapid scoring have led to a spread of scores that have had most results beyond doubt a long way before the finish. At the LBW Trust dinner last Saturday night, Michael Holding was complaining about how few close games there had been, and he had a point. Of the four quarter-finals, only the Australia-Pakistan fixture flared up, and only briefly before Australia cruised home. The New Zealand-South Africa semi-final seemed like the best one-day match ever played because there were so few others like it in this tournament. Afghanistan-Scotland, Australia-New Zealand, Ireland-UAE, Ireland-Zimbabwe, Bangladesh-England, New Zealand-Bangladesh: that is seven close finishes in 48 games. The average winning margin in the other World Cup games was 136 runs (if won by the team batting first) and 112 balls to spare (if won by the team batting second). Sadly, spectacular performances by one team so demoralised the other that there was often no meaningful contest. One-day cricket thrives on tight finishes, but the dominance of bat over ball resulted in blowouts six times out of seven.The so-called minnows were not responsible. Test-playing countries England, Pakistan, the West Indies, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and even India in their semi-final were on the wrong end of big margins.

The 10-team World Cup that has been mooted for 2019 would  be fair and meaningful only if a coordinated scheme of cup qualifiers, involving 18 to 20 countries, is played in the interim. While Pakistan are forced to host series in the Middle East, touring teams should be bound to play World Cup qualifiers against the UAE and Afghanistan. All tours to England should include cup qualifiers with Ireland and Scotland. Kenya and Namibia ought to be brought into southern African tours, and south-east Asian countries should be zoned into subcontinental tours. An ongoing World Cup qualifying points table could keep 50-over cricket relevant between cups, and give the lesser nations a real chance to play more and qualify for the main tournament on their merits. Wally Edwards' suggestion of re-branding 50-over cricket as "World Cup cricket" is a good one, but only if the World Cup is kept running throughout its cycles, not just wheeled out as a label every four years.

Relevance is what the World Cup has, and what other 50-over tournaments customarily lack. Relevance, by definition, must be concentrated. Holding had another good suggestion, which was to cease all Twenty20 international cricket. Keep building Twenty20 as a format between city-based franchises, he said, but drop the exhibition-style Twenty20 internationals. The Champions League, contested between the T20 winners in each country, can be that game's pinnacle event, but otherwise Twenty20 can help save 50-over cricket by butting out of its territory. It's a sound idea. The last thing the cricket world needs is, one or two years down the track, to be looking back at the magic of the 2015 World Cup and wondering where it all went.

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