Former India player turned veteran commentator Aakash Chopra has said that Ben Stokes’ retirement from ODI cricket has once again brought to the problems of the 50-over format into the limelight. However, Stokes announced his retirement ahead of the first game of the ongoing three-match series against South Africa. And, he ended with just five runs and failed to pick up a wicket in his final match at his home ground in Durham on Tuesday, July 19 as well.
While talking about Stokes’ retirement in a video shared on his YouTube channel, Aakash Chopra said: “Ben Stokes has bid goodbye to ODI cricket at just 31 years of age. We have been saying for many years that ODI is the format that is struggling because there are problems. If problems are not there, you won’t have so many rule changes – two balls, powerplay, super sub and what not.”
Aakash Chopra again observed: “There is more noise being created during bilateral series now. They didn’t want to say that but everybody knew bilateral ODI cricket is struggling. There is a lot of excitement when the World Cup happens once in four years, it was there in 2019 as well and will be there in 2023 also.”
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While there have been suggestions for bilateral ODI series to be replaced by multi-nation tournaments. Cricket South Africa’s (CSA) decision to foucs on their domestic T20 tournament over an ODI series against Australia has raised questions also. And, Aakash Chopra explained why players prefer T20s and Tests over the 50-over format.
He stated, “Michael Vaughan has said that something has to give. Every country wants their T20 league, when a player is playing, these are his primary years, whether it is the IPL or any other league, you get a lot of money. After that, all cricketers consider Test cricket very dear because they want to leave a legacy.”
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“The commercial angle is T20 cricket, the legacy angle is Test match cricket, ODI is hanging somewhere in between. So it is getting slightly easier to leave ODI cricket, not so much in terms of workload management because we have seen people leave Tests as well, but it has fallen slightly behind in terms of priority,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
