1000 One-day Internationals: How India played a leader in growing the format

Kolkata: Come Sunday, Rohit Sharma will be leading India out to play their 1000th One-day International against the West Indies - being the first country to reach the landmark in the history of the format. Quite a significant one, given the fact that when the first limited overs international match was played in England 47 years back, India did not have much of a clue on how to adapt to it.

It’s surely worthwhile to look back in wonder at such a fascinating journey - which was a combination of the vision of some astute administrators of BCCI who realised that this could be the biggest cash cow through the entire Nineties and early part of this millennium and of course some of the tallest legends of the game playing their part with their exploits. Till, of course, the T20s came and swung the landscape of the game with it’s first World Cup and then the IPL and franchise leagues.

Perhaps, Sachin Tendulkar summed up the historic relevance of the ODIs ever so perfectly when he described it as a bridge between Test cricket and T20s - though it may have lost some of it’s relevance in recent times. The ICC World Cup still remains the definitive title of the world champions’ mantle in cricket, but the emergence of World Test Championship and the commercial success of T20 World Cup has begun to pose uncomfortable questions.

Tendulkar’s longevity and status as the highest rungetter of all times in ODI cricket perhaps reflects India’s obsession with it when he was at the peak of his prowess. A career spanning 23 years between 1989 and 2012 (he retired from the ODIs a year earlier than this Test curtain call), 463 matches and 18.426 runs are figures which are daunting.

Ironically enough, while four of India’s batters figure in the top-10 scorers in this format (Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid), the Men in Blue have been able to win the World Cup twice during this period - that too in a gap of nearly 30 years between 1983 and 2011. Australia have won it a record five times during this phase but have played in a significantly lesser number of ODIs - and this is where the BCCI’s gameplan to cash in on the format which was a rage across the ‘80s and ‘90s play a key role.

Realising that it could be a real moneyspinner after India’s ‘83 World Cup and ‘85 World Series Championship wins, the BCCI went about liberally to schedule ODI matches in bi-lateral and tri-series - the latter having gone out of fashion with choc-a-bloc international calendars. It will be statisticians’ delight to find out how many such series India had been a part of, with Sri Lanka almost being a constant factor in such gigs.

Jagmohan Dalmiya, the BCCI strongman, charmed his way to host a number of high profile, multi-nation tournaments in India like the MRF World Series (1989), Hero Cup (1993) while the bin-annual Asia Cup also guaranteed India’s appearance in countless ODIs. The Hero Cup, incidentally, remains a landmark tournament where the BCCI won a legal battle to become eligible to throw open their telecast rights to the highest bidder - a template which had been filling up the coffers of cricket ever since.

The ICC, meanwhile, played its part in the proliferation of one-dayers - with Dalmiya who took over as their President once again playing a key role. Realising that a four-year gap between the World Cups is likely to leave the fans pining for more, ICC planted a ICC International Trophy (which subsequently was re-christened as ICC Champions Trophy) every two years.

Despite the team’s often chequered history in ODIs, India are one of the biggest crowdpullers across all formats of the game. A landmark, as this one, is but a logical conclusion...