Ravi Shastri backs Shahid Afridi's take on reducing ODI's to a 40 over format

A few years back, the governing body of cricket and officials were worried about the existence of long-format Test cricket amid rising T20 leagues across the globe, however, now things have taken a sharp turn as ODI cricket has become the most inefficient and time-consuming format of cricket.

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The major setback for the format was when Ben Stokes announced his retirement from the format to focus on the other two formats due to heavily packed international scheduling.

Former India head coach Ravi Shastri has an interesting take on how ODI cricket can still be made interesting as he reiterated Pakistan great Shahid Afridi's words.

Shastri during commentary for the second ODI between West Indies and India said that there is no harm in making a game interesting by trimming a few overs.

“There is no harm in shortening the span of the game. When one-day cricket started, it was 60 overs. When we won the World Cup in 1983, it was 60 overs. After that, people thought that 60 overs were a bit too long. People found that the span of overs is between 20 to 40 and hard to digest. So they reduced it from 60 to 50. So years have gone by now since that decision so why not reduce it from 50 to 40 now. Because you got to be forward-thinking and evolve. It stayed for 50 for too long,” he said.

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Former Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi was on the same lines as Ravi Shastri with a view to shorten the ODI format.

“One-day cricket has become quite boring now. I would suggest to cut ODI cricket from 50 overs to 40 overs in order to make it entertaining,” said Shahid Afridi during an interview with Samaa TV earlier.