Jonathan Agnew sees the IPL as being not a totally bad thing, but reckons 50-over cricket has had its day and has to go.

Read his blog here. Comment on it here or there, as you wish!

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May as well get rid of it as the fans will be turned off it now as 20/20 has taken off worldwide.

Put it this way i don't see how 20/20 50 over and test cricket can all stay and test cricket isn't going to go and 20/20 is far more exciting than 50 over cricket with more boundaries and so on.

As far as I'm concerned once you get away from two innings per side you have a bastardised version of the game. If 20/20 replaces 50 overs so be it. I like all forms so I'm relaxed on the whole deal but surely we all agree the longer form is best no?

I hope the 50 over game stays. I want to watch a bowler bowling more than 4 overs. What they could do is cut down the ODIs to 3 instead of 5 and sometimes 7 and that ridiculous CB series that just seems to go on for ever.

As usual, I agree and disagree with what Aggers wrote. He's sitting on the fence a little, which is understandable - none of us really know what to make of the IPL and ICL at the moment.

I do not see Test Cricket being threatened by T20 or any other format of the game in this country, or many other countries where Test Cricket is played. I've said it before, the reason T20 and the IPL and ICL can be successful in India is because it's consumer driven, which it is not in this country.

You only need to do a quick comparison of the countries to understand this. Population of the UK, about 70 mil, India 1 Billion. Most popular sport in England, Soccer followed by Rugby with Cricket maybe third. India, Cricket, particularly T20! Look at the difference in potential audiences between the two countries! Larger audiences equals larger profits, despite the price differences. If we say 10 million supporters in this country will pay£100 a year towards watching cricket, that's £1B, if 750mil in India pay £10 a year towards it that's £7.5B, and therein lies the difference. These are only hypotheticals but it's easy to see how much greater the financial rewards are in India, due to the larger potential audences.

Giles Clarke knows this too, which is why he's dismissing calls for a 'city based' franchise similar to that used in India, because in this country it won't work - fans will not switch from their counties to 'city franchies' and we simply do not have the audience numbers to make it viable.

The biggest threat to Test Cricket in this country are the escalating costs of watching it. With ticket prices now costing upwards of £100 a seat for one days play at many Test venues and Sky coverage costing the average person something in the region of £300 a year, it's not hard to see how much more expensive this is when compared to that in India.

The BCCI and subsequent IPL, have realised that to maintain interest and spectator levels in Cricket and therefore the financial income from it, they have to put on lots of short format matches with plenty of 'bollywood' razzmatazz at times that spectators can watch it - usually after work - your average Indian cannot afford to take time off work to watch Cricket. If the accessiblity to Cricket in this country continues in the same way as it's going - which is becoming financially punitive for many people, and the cost of living spiralling upwards with wages not keeping pace with inflation, things could pretty much go the same way as they have in India.

The ECB should be working hard to make Test Cricket financially accessible for the people who want to enjoy it rather than trying to jump on the franchised T20 bandwagon, which as things stand at the moment will not be successful in this country and will be seen as simply another 'cash cow' for the Cricket administrators.

If the ICC were even nearly competent at being World Crickets Administrators they would have amended the 50 over game to make it exciting to watch, but instead they've done nothing and even the attempt they did make was half hearted and not properly thought through which is why it failed. So yes the 50 over format game probably will just fizzle out because the ICC are clueless as to what to do about it. If they spent more time actually doing what they're supposed to do - promoting all cricket worldwide - instead of squabbling amongst themselves, we wouldn't be in this position.

I'm not sure what the ECB can do here. They could reduce ticket prices at the test grounds (maybe: they are set by the host venues, but the ECB could perhaps apply pressure). But all that would achieve is a loss of income to the ground. From the ECB's viewpoint, no-one is being priced out of test cricket who matters - because the fact is that they sell all the seats even at the present high prices. In England, we just don't see empty grounds any more before the fourth day of a test, do we?

Your point about Sky is taken - but the issue here is the bundling of sports packages. It's not £300 per year to see cricket: the lion's share of that is siphoned off to the majority interest sport you mentioned in your post. As is well known by regulars here, football bores the pants off me, and I wouldn't pay 300p to see a game. The fact that I would have to contribute to that sport (and to a significant degree) to see a few days' cricket each year is what puts me off the TV packages. Sky can address this easily enough: I'm back to pay per view TV. That would make cricket affordable to those who want it: buy it by the day, or buy a season ticket - but at least you won't wind up paying also for football and the SE Asian Women's Ten Pin Bowling which I saw on Sky Sports Three one night many years ago.

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Its not about what we agree on. Its more about what our next generation will like. We have grown up watching and admiring test cricket...we will keep loving it. But our next generation might find T20 and ODIs better than test cricket.

BCCI will not allow ODIs to die. ODIs are better revenue generator than T20s More air time - more ad revenue. But I am truely worried about test cricket. ICC must have some strong policy to keep test cricket alive. This 7ODI and 2-test trend is very dangerous.

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Well it seems to be mainly in India that this happens, when the other team isn't a big draw. But most of the other countries schedule at least three, or more when the opposition is a big draw. England have scheduled a four-Test series against India for 2011, Australia's playing two series of three Tests every summer except for the Ashes, South Africa recently concluded a four-Test series against the West Indies, who in turn are playing three against Australia with 5 ODIs. As was pointed out on another thread, it makes perfect sense for the BCCI to weight it towards ODIs if that's the most popular form of the game there- but I can't see CA, ECB or anyone else letting Tests die.

No

Not without that "bastardisation" as you put it.

If Kerry Packer and the 50 over format did not come to cricket in the late 70's, I think an ashes series in Australia would now be struggling to have as much interest as an Australia v England lawn bowls tournament.

You could kiss goodbye to televised test cricket for starters, and as a knock on effect a forum like this would become a pretty boring source of debate as except for the eyewitnesses at the test matches no one else would see them.

In Australia you could also kiss goodbye to a lot of the test players that you are familiar with, because without the bells, whistles and most importantly public interest created by the advent of One Day cricket in Australia, a lot of these players would either have not been atracted to cricket in the first place or like most sports a kid picks up lost interest in it in their late teens/early adulthood.

And if cricket suffered and never developed as it has here in Australia post WSC in the past 30 years. I am sure that would have had a knock on to the interest in test cricket in England due to playing a lower profile and lower quality opponent. And to other cricket nations in the world as well.

The current strength and quality of modern day test cricket, owes a big debt of gratitude for its current wellbeing to its bastardised shorter offspring.