How cricket reflects our age.

A game of cricket is an extended narrative. It’s also an exercise in cause and effect. Luck aside, if you play a bad shot, you may be dismissed; if you bowl a bad ball, you will probably be hit for runs and vice versa. There is a causal element of culpability.

But the ever shorter limited-over forms of the game dispense with cause and effect. In T20 or The Hundred, if you’re out to an ugly swipe, you shrug and say, “That’s the name of the game”; if you’re hit for six you note the heavy bats and shortened boundaries, shrug and say, “What do you expect?” Those shrugs have taken cause and effect out of the game. But if you take one of the defining qualities out of a game, what are you left with?

It has been a slow train coming. In 1963, in response to concerns over falling attendances at county matches, the MCC introduced the first one-day competition. Snappily titled The First Class Knock Out Competition for the Gillette Cup, each team batted for a maximum of 65 overs and, rain apart, a result was guaranteed in a day. The following year, matches were reduced to 60 overs. Five years later, the John Player League was established, 40 overs per innings, and in 1972 the 55-over Benson & Hedges Cup completed the short-form roster. This was also the length of one-day internationals, which were introduced in the early 1970s, although the first World Cup, in 1975, won by the West Indies, was contested over 60 overs for each side.

Through time, sponsors changed as rapidly as over quotas were reduced. Internationals were reduced to 50 overs, the Gillette Cup became a 40-over swish, while the Benson & Hedges Cup gave way to the 20-overs-per-innings T20 Blast. This was played in the evenings to attract an after-work crowd enticed by a beer and cheerleaders, big-hitting, non-stop spectacle.