Tuesday, January 15, 2002 "It will be noisy and entertaining," Peter Roebuck wrote in anticipation of the inaugural VB Series, "but it will not examine the soul." The marketing boffins of Australian cricket, their souls sated by another dollar-spinning Test summer, would happily settle for the first two.

The only noise emanating from the second final of last year's one-day series was the hollow chatter of 31,000 diehards scattered round a concrete bullring built to house three times that number; the only excitement was had by the anoraks revelling in Australia's 19th victory in a row in the competition. So it was again at the MCG last Friday for the opening swig of the Green Can Cup. The most worrying statistic was not the 250 "serial idiots" evicted, the 23 "lobotomised dickheads" arrested, nor the 23 runs by which Australia lost. It was the 3,235,983 of Melbourne's 3,283,000 citizens who stayed at home.

An unexpected social revolution in Australia's cricketing culture is gathering steam. Tests are the game's red-hot, trendy, dynamic genre; one-dayers the beige-tinted, fuddy-duddy, embarrassing younger cousin. More people attended a drizzly first day of the Boxing Day Test (61,796) than the opening day-nighter (47,017), traditionally the mega-budget blockbuster of an Australian summer. True, around 62,000 people turned up at the MCG two days later for the game against South Africa. But that figure is still shy of the boom days of the 1980s and early 1990s, and neither it - nor Australia's refreshingly sluggish start - could dilute the feeling that the public has fallen out of love with hit-and-giggle. And the game's rulers are not laughing.

That much is apparent from the script alterations to this summer's pantomime, which are now part and parcel of the traingular series worldwide. The introduction of a bonus point for winning with a run-rate 1.25 runs higher than your opponent, an idea lifted from Australia's domestic competition, is a positive change but a cosmetic one. The new law permitting one bouncer an over is a good start but does not go far enough. It is one of cricket's ironies that the one-day game, as a form of light entertainment, outlaws one of the most entertaining sights there is: a top-order batsman hooking a fearsome fast bowler. Perhaps the most extraordinary one-day game in Australian history was the 1976-77 Gillette Cup match when WA, rolled for 77, knocked Queensland over for 62 after Dennis Lillee opened up with four straight bouncers to Viv Richards and then bowled him with his sixth delivery. Now that's entertainment.

The law changes, although welcome, are merely so much tinkering round the edges. What is needed is a mini-revolution - and the good news is that it is one simple step away. It does not involve mind-wrenching mathematical formulas. It will not alter the game's timespan, nor tamper with its basic tenets. Balls will stay white, flannels will remain colourful. What it involves is taking the limited out of limited overs, quite literally, by abolishing the absurd law that restricts bowlers to a maximum of 10 overs.

Think of the infinite possibilities this opens up, at the selection table alone. Shall we stick with four bowlers? How about fielding eight batsmen and asking Warney to bowl 25 overs, with McGrath and Gillespie taking care of a dozen each? The Sri Lankans could go even further, dropping all their dime-a-dozen dobblers and bowling Murali and Vaas from start to finish, with all the risks this entails.

Captains would become more than the blokes who shift the field around after 15 overs. Batsmen would no longer be able to bide their time until Pollock has completed his 10 but would have to invent methods of counter-attack. Bowlers would cease to be clock-in, clock-out factory workers and would be required to draw on untapped powers of stamina and creativity. The tedious slog-stabilise-slog cycle - smash over the top in the first 15 overs, scamper singles for the next 20 or so, then crash the part-timers towards the death - would be upset. Guesswork, chance and unpredictability, all intoxicating ingredients of Test cricket, would suddenly have a part to play and, apart from anything else, it would be only fair. Batsmen are not told to retire once they have faced 60 balls; so why one rule for the game's artists and another for its artisans?

In essence, the balance of power would tilt back towards the fielding side. Already, some two or three decades prematurely, one cannot help but think of the early days of the World Series Cup as the golden years of Australian one-day cricket: Geoff Boycott slogging in 1979-80; Rod Marsh shattering his bat in 1980-81; Bruce Laird's glittering 117 not out against Holding, Roberts, Marshall, Garner and Croft in 1981-82; Lance Cairns swiping Lillee one-handed over the square-leg fence in 1982-83. These feats have a lustre about them because they were forged in contests of ball versus bat; modern triumphs are demeaned by the fact that the odds are weighted so heavily in the batsman's favour.

But don't hold your breath waiting for the game's rulers to do away with the 10-over torpor and its strangling grip on the game's throat. Chances are the ACB will instead embrace another experimental rule from the guinea-pig hothouse of the ING Cup, one that allows teams to field a 12th non-batting player. The outcome is that all sides have five specialist bowlers and the game's one element of chance - how and when a captain juggles his part-timers - is rendered obsolete. Far from reviving limited-overs cricket, it might just about kill the golden goose once and for all.

Chris Ryan is managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

More Chris Ryan
Neutralise then pulverise
The star who's one of us

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd