Cricket's new order: Time to replace bilaterals with tighter tournaments

As IPL and T20 leagues reshape cricket's economics, the sport is drifting toward a new hierarchy-ODIs as events, T20 as franchise-driven, and Tests as curated rivalries

Fresh off a third International Cricket Council (ICC) Men’s T20 World Cup triumph, the country promptly went into the 19th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Colours changed, the stakes were recalibrated, but the game did not pause. These days, it never does. The years when there was such a thing called off-season are a distant memory today. 

And hence the quiet fatigue, visible through the choices players themselves are making: Be it Lockie Ferguson skipping the first half of IPL 2026 for Punjab Kings to spend time with his family; or Josh Hazlewood missing Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s early matches, with Cricket Australia managing his workload. This, despite his absence from the T20 World Cup. 

Then there's much talk about Kolkata Knight Riders missing Cameron Green, the bowler. The Australian was picked up as an allrounder for ₹25.20 crore at the IPL 2026 auction, making him the most expensive overseas player in IPL history. However, his home board has barred him from bowling, despite his recovery from a back injury. 

So who’s to blame here? IPL? No. It has done more than elevate Indian cricket; it has reshaped the game at the global level. The league is not an excess, but a clear marker of where cricket’s centre of gravity now lies. It has expanded the sport’s economy, redefined its audience, and exposed an inconvenient truth: Not all cricket carries equal weight, and an excess of it only erodes value. 

For years, formats coexisted in stretched, often stopgap bilateral tours. Now, the evidence — commercial, cultural, and emotional — points to a hierarchy that’s too stark to ignore. 

At the summit remains the one-day World Cup, still the game’s grandest stage. The 2023 edition drew more than 1.25 billion stadium spectators, alongside 1 trillion global live viewing minutes. Its matches endure: The 2019 final between England and New Zealand is not just remembered but relived, and its result contested among cricket fans. 

This is ODI cricket’s paradox — it produces enduring theatre, yet, in bilateral form, has become forgettable. Series drift without urgency, often featuring second- or third-string squads. This is neither sustainable nor necessary. 

The future of ODIs lies not in volume, which is already shrinking, but in meaning. England’s Jos Buttler once remarked that if asked which World Cup players most want to win, “they’d probably say a 50-over World Cup”. 

The logical shift is to treat ODIs as a luxury good. Bilaterals should give way to tighter multi-nation tournaments clustered before the World Cup. Context must replace clutter. 

If ODIs are sustained by nostalgia and brilliance, T20 is driven by momentum and immediacy. Here, franchise leagues dominate attention, revenue and ambition. The IPL alone amasses vast watch time, with the finals being among the most viewed matches. Around it, leagues such as the Big Bash (Australia), SA20 (South Africa), and Major League Cricket (USA) form a lattice through which players and audiences move. 

A World Cricketers’ Association report notes that the sport is shifting from a “top-down” model centred on internationals to a club-based system shaped by domestic T20 leagues and private franchises. Average player earnings, it adds, are two to four times higher in domestic T20 leagues than in international cricket — outside India, Australia, and England. 

In this ecosystem, bilateral T20 internationals look increasingly redundant. Few T20 World Cup finals, barring those featuring India, linger in memory. Even standout moments, such as the 2016 final defined by Carlos Brathwaite’s four back-to-back sixes off Ben Stokes, are exceptions. The market solution is clear: Let T20 settle into franchise cricket, reserving internationals for global events. 

Test cricket, meanwhile, resists market logic, offering depth over speed. When India meet Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy or an Ashes summer unfolds, the appetite for the five-day game is unmistakable. 

Yet, imbalance persists. Not every series carries such weight; many pass quietly, with limited significance and thin audiences. Still, certain results can jolt attention back — India’s home whitewash against New Zealand and South Africa, for instance, sharpens the stakes of what follows. 

The instinct has often been to “fix” Tests by shortening or repackaging them. They need none of that. They need curation: Fewer series, greater meaning. Priority should go to contests where history, rivalry, or recent context generate their own pull. The World Test Championship can help, but it cannot substitute narrative. 

What emerges is a clearer architecture: ODIs as event-driven contests; T20 as a franchise-led marketplace; and Tests as high-stakes rivalries. Such a structure would align cricket better with its economic realities, while easing burnout. 

Resistance from conservative boards is inevitable, but the erosion they fear is already under way. Investment and rights values, the World Cricketers’ Association notes, are increasingly driven by context-rich internationals, notably ICC events, and domestic T20 leagues, while bilateral internationals are “declining or plateauing”. 

The game, in other words, is already reorganising itself. The IPL did not create this shift; it revealed it. Each Indian summer, as it gathers the world’s best into a relentless spectacle, it makes visible what cricket has become: Faster, denser, more fragmented – and in need of sharper definition.

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