As most cricket followers would be knowing, there has been a lot of debate over the future of cricket offlate, needless to say that it's been sparked off by the T20 phenomena and more importantly the money-spinning monster called IPL.

This debate seems to be mainly concentrated on "how to attract more crowds into the stadiums". Even though this approach seems like a commercially driven one, it does help in improving the falling standards of cricket around the world. This is because the only way a youngster gets attracted towards the game is when he/she watches the legends battle it out in the centre.

Lets come to what the pundits have been saying about to take forward the game post T20 and IPL bursted on the scene.

Even though the invention (or innovation... i dont know the right word) of T20 cricket took place in the UK, the true marketing/ making it big took place with Lalit modi's brain child IPL. For some time, nobody knew what to say or how the future would look like or what's best in the intrest of the game.

Now slowly but surely, people have started raising their concerns and it can be broadly classified into two categories of ideas:

1. Test cricket is the "God". It is the oldest form of cricket and it tests the true ability of the players. Cricket's soul will be lost if test cricket is stopped/neglected.

And the two other forms of cricket i.e ODI (to be precise 50 over game) and T20 cricket looks almost the same with the 50 over game appearing the expanded version of the T20 game.

Hence, let the oldest and the newest forms of the game survive and lets us dump 50 over game altogether.

This formula looks good, but the next obvious question is: what will you do when tomorrow some other curtalied form of the game (say a 10 over per side game gains popularity)?????.. will you replace T20 with a T10 game or will you dump test cricket?

The main concern about the 50 over game is the action or rather the lack of it during the middle overs. ICC has tried to improve this situation with introductions like powerplays, free-hits etc etc, but none seem to have worked well.

2. This is a new idea mainly theorized by Sachin. This idea concentrates in making the 50 over game more interesting rather than taking the extreme step of dumping it altogether.

The idea is in 'splitting' the game like it is done in test cricket. Each side plays 25 over innings twice. So it will be like 25 over inning played 4 times.

Seems interesting rite???

But it has a major flip-side:

Imagine a situation where one side over dominates first-half of the game. For eg. team which bats first score 250 in their 25 overs (which is totally probable in this age of T20 cricket where teams score 200-225 runs in their allotted 20 overs). Then the other side scores around 125-150 in their 25 overs. So the first side has a 'first innings lead' of more than 100 runs. Then it becomes a mere formality for the players to play the second half and for the spectators to watch the second half since the side batting second has to score more than 300 runs in the fourth innings. (assuming a score of 225 in the third innings. 225+ first innings lead of 125= 350)

You might compare it with test cricket saying how is it been working there for over 100 years. The answer lies in the fact that test cricket has the concept of a 'Draw'. Hence if a side over-dominates the first half of the game, the other side can still play well and save the match by a draw. This kind of a comeback seems completely improbable with the weaker team having to score more that 300 runs from 25 overs in the 4th innings.

Thus, eventhough Sachin's idea seems brilliant on paper, it has a major loop hole in it.