How Limited-Overs Cricket Was Born: ODIs, the World Cup, and T20

Cricket Before Limited-Overs: Test-Only World

Until 1963, English cricket below Test level was played exclusively in multi-day formats. County cricket matches ran two or three days; club cricket played full-day fixtures. International cricket meant Tests. There was no one-day version of the game for counties or international sides — the concept barely existed.

The pressure for change came from finance and attendance. County cricket was losing money; Test matches required spectators to come for up to five days to see a result; and the wider public — particularly those who had grown up with other Saturday afternoon sports — were not attending cricket in numbers that sustained the game commercially.

The Gillette Cup, 1963: England's First One-Day Competition

In 1963, the England and Wales Cricket Board's predecessor (the Cricket Council) launched the Gillette Cup — the world's first major one-day cricket competition. Sixty overs per side, white ball, a result in a day. The format was viewed sceptically by traditionalists but embraced by crowds. The final at Lord's drew a capacity attendance. Within a decade it was clear that one-day cricket had an audience that five-day cricket was failing to reach.

The First ODI: Melbourne, January 1971

The first official One Day International was played on 5 January 1971 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground between Australia and England. It was not planned — it came about because the third day of a Test match had been completely washed out by rain and the MCG's administration wanted to give spectators something on the Sunday that had been set aside as a rest day. A 40-over-per-side match was hurriedly arranged, England won by 5 wickets, and 46,000 people turned up to watch.

The scale of the crowd — far larger than any Test attendance that week — was a revelation. Cricket administrators immediately recognised they had stumbled onto something significant. ODI cricket was formalised as a recognised international format within two years.

The Prudential World Cup, 1975: Cricket's Biggest Stage

The first Cricket World Cup was held in England in June 1975 — eight nations, 60 overs per side, played on county grounds across England. The West Indies beat Australia in a famous final at Lord's. The tournament's scale, its capacity crowds, and its television coverage gave limited-overs cricket a legitimacy that club administrators and traditionalists had doubted. The format worked: results were definitive, the game was accessible to casual fans, and stars could shine in a single day.

The Kerry Packer Revolution: World Series Cricket

Between 1977 and 1979, Australian media magnate Kerry Packer ran World Series Cricket — an unofficial series that paid top players far beyond their national board rates. Packer introduced night cricket under floodlights, coloured clothing and equipment, white balls, black sightscreens, and dramatic broadcast innovations including camera angles and in-ball microphones. Many of these innovations are now standard; they came directly from World Series Cricket's need to present the game more attractively for television.

The Invention of T20: Surrey, 2003

Twenty20 cricket was invented not by cricket administrators but by a marketing executive: Stuart Robertson of the England and Wales Cricket Board proposed a 20-over format specifically to attract a younger, more casual audience. The first T20 match between county sides was played in June 2003. Within a year it was the best-attended domestic competition in English cricket. The concept spread: the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 was held in South Africa in 2007.

The IPL — launched in 2008 after the inaugural T20 World Cup — transformed T20 from a novelty into the sport's commercially dominant format. The franchise model, player auctions, and broadcast deals generated revenues that dwarfed anything previously seen in cricket, permanently shifting the game's financial and administrative centre of gravity.