Do teams even play ODIs anymore?

There’s World Cup years, and then there’s the rest. Even with a Champions Trophy coming up, no one seems keen to play 50 overs.

Wanindu Hasaranga is really good at taking wickets. You may have seen him do this for Sri Lanka, or in the IPL. He captains his nation and is a pretty well-known cricketer. And in 2024, he was the world’s equal leading wicket-taker for ODIs. None of this is surprising, he is very good at hitting the stumps.

You look at this list, and some incredible players have ended up with the most wickets in a year. Joel Garner, Kapil Dev, Curtly Ambrose, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram, Saqlain Mushtaq, Shane Warne, Shaun Pollock, Muttiah Muralitharan, Brett Lee, Shakib al Hasan, Mitchell Starc and Lasith Malinga. That is some list, and Hasaranga is not on their level.

There are others who just played a lot, or perfected a good slower ball for a year. Ajantha Mendis took the title one year by inventing a whole new method of bowling. Hasaranga is a long way from the worst or most random on this list. But clearly, he did it in a year when not many bowlers took wickets.

His 26 is one of the lowest totals ever, but remember, I said equal leading wicket-taker. And the other player on this list is a lot less famous. If you know him at all, it is probably from T20, and even then, it is doubtful. If you’ve seen him in ODIs, you are in a very small cult group known as associate hipsters. Those of us who search high and low for random streams. I call him big Dil, but no one else does. He is Dilon Heyliger. The Canadian strongman destroys batters on associate wickets that are often up and down, with his muscular back-of-a-length bowling.

Of all the players to ever take the most wickets in a year for ODIs, Big Dil would have to be close to the oddest. But that is what ODIs are like now.

Next on the list is Aryan Dutt, the young Dutch offspinner. So, that means the world’s three leading ODI wicket-takers from last year are not at the Champions Trophy in February.

I’m currently commentating on the India-England series for talkSPORT, which made me think about how many ODIs some of these players had been in. So for the Cricketer magazine, I looked into ODIs in 2024, and it didn’t take long.

Australia played 11 of them - that is the ninth-most of any team. And the only team with more who will be at the Champions Trophy is Afghanistan. They played 14 matches. Sri Lanka had 18 games in 2024, which would have been the 14th-most in 2023.

The teams who combined for more than half of the matches include one of the Champions Trophy teams. Sides will line up as many ODIs as possible in and around World Cup years. But otherwise, ODIs barely exist. And while the ICC wants the Champions Trophy to be like the Euros, in truth it’s about as minor as a major trophy can be.

ODIs have disappeared a little in the last few years. But this doesn’t make it look that bad. What this doesn’t show you is that there are more men’s teams with ODI status than ever before. So these numbers are being held up by teams like Canada and the Netherlands, who play regularly. But even so, 104 is not a big year.

We had small years during Covid, but the real pattern is that the 12 months after a World Cup, teams give up on ODIs. You can see the pattern starting in 2012, and the same has happened for 2016, 2020 (Covid assisted) and now 2024. Basically the death of bilateral ODIs happens when T20s take over. So the years that take the biggest hits are the furthest from the next 50-over World Cup.

From a planning standpoint, this makes sense. Focus on other forms of cricket and then slowly ramp back up as the main trophy comes in. In the old days, ODIs were the cash cow of cricket boards, so it didn’t matter if a World Cup was on. You had to fit in that seven-match bilateral ODI series.

Our entire game has changed since then. Take Virat Kohli, who will go down as one of the greatest ODI batters of all time. Yet, even while his career is still ongoing, the games are drying up around him. Three matches last year is an incredible drop-off. His form is the most discussed in the world, and I have no idea how he is going in 50-over cricket right now.

This Champions Trophy is a complete afterthought for most teams. And how could it not be, we had our last one eight years ago. It has changed names, been cancelled and also been ignored. There is a whole generation of cricket fans who don’t know about the white jackets.

There is a small passionate fanbase that loves it, but many fans, just kind of shrug their shoulders about its very existence.

The players also don’t rate it. Unless it is your only highlight in your career, not many players even mention the wins. Australia basically ignored it for generations, winning everything else except this tournament like a passive aggressive shadow ban. The ICC wants it to be the Euros of cricket, it’s more like the Commonwealth Games.

On an episode of Crickpicks recently, we went through the winning Pakistan team from 2017 - and I was shocked Azhar Ali played. I covered that match. My memory shouldn’t be used as evidence for anything, but it’s not a great sign.

On top of all that, there was a fairly persistent rumour this tournament was going to be T20. That never happened, but it is much more likely to be 20 overs than 50 in 2029. Although, knowing cricket, the entire trophy could be cancelled, renamed, or delayed from that year. They should replace the trophy with a golden cockroach, as this thing can survive anything.

So maybe the T20 rumours had something to do with the fact that the main teams couldn’t even be bothered to warm up for this edition. India isn’t even going to Pakistan, and the hosts forgot to put their squad in for three weeks. This ICC event has very last week of school term vibes.

Seven teams are coming to an ICC trophy with pretty much no experience in the format recently. And you might be thinking, well, that is fine - they play enough white-ball cricket. But the English players before the last 50-over World Cup said that they were struggling with the different tempos and skills needed for the longer format. Players from other countries have talked about it a lot too.

For this Champions Trophy, New Zealand will have prepared by playing three matches last year, another three so far this January, and their warm-up games in February. In 2024, they used 13 players - only five of them are even in the Champions Trophy squad.

India also played three ODIs in 2024, England only eight. So you would think that with England touring India for a white-ball series a few weeks before the Champions Trophy, they would play just one-day internationals. Or at least more 50-over cricket than 20. Instead, it is three ODIs and five T20Is. Like, they are actively taking the piss out of the ICC.

And not just them, but pretty much all the teams who have qualified for the Champions Trophy are actively trolling the ICC by avoiding the format. (Maybe they thought it would be T20 as well).

And when you look at star players, it isn’t like they’re off playing one-day domestic cricket. That is almost entirely journeymen and youngsters now. It’s not often a major player turns up for their local team more than once a season.

Think about England - for them to win, Joe Root is probably going to have to make a lot of runs based on how their team has been handling spin bowling. Well, his last ODI was in the 2023 World Cup. Up until the start of 2022, Root was averaging over 50 in ODIs. Since then, he’s played only 19 matches while going at 23. We know how talented he is, but even he has struggled with a lack of games.

It is very hard to be good at ODI cricket when you don’t play it. The good news for Root and others is, at least they are all in the same boat.

The Champions Trophy is meant to celebrate the best ODI teams. The ICC bang on about it every time the tournament turns up (which is when they don’t ignore or cancel it). Yet these best of the best teams honour the ICC by barely playing the format.

If you like the Champions Trophy, pop on your white jacket, as it may be the last one like it. If you don’t like it, don’t worry, it seems like the boards feel the same way.