Jos Buttler and his fellow batsmen are relishing the 'enlongated T20' of one-day cricket

The day before the second one-day international at Cuttack, there was an incongruous sight. Several thousand Indian supporters were sitting in the stands, watching the England cricket team play a game of football on the outfield: a testament not just to the country’s love of cricket or the city not having hosted an ODI since 2014, but also the continued appeal of the ODI format.

Though it can sit rather awkwardly between the other two formats, in a sense, no format shows cricket’s direction of travel - the growing power of the bat over the ball, and ever-faster scoring - like the ODI. What is ostensibly a halfway house between the purity of Tests and the razzmatazz of T20 cricket has moved decisively towards the shortest format. “Sometimes it feels like an elongated Twenty20,” Jos Buttler said ahead of the second ODI.

Increasingly it feels as much. England have only reached 350 nine times in their history. The first was against Pakistan in 1992 in a 55-over game, and the second against a ragtag Bangladesh in 2005. The other seven times have been since the 2015 World Cup, in just 32 completed innings.

England, of course, were late to embracing the demands of the modern ODI game, although the curiosity is how little impact Twenty20 cricket’s first decade had on ODIs. From 2002, the year before T20 cricket was launched, to 2012, the average run rate only increased from 4.94 to 5.05, actually a slower rate of increase than in the previous decade.

As often in sports, a decisive moment in the evolution of the modern ODI came not on the field but in the boardroom. From October 2011, the International Cricket Council agreed that all ODIs should be played with two balls - one from each end - to stop the ball going soft and harder to hit. A year later, the ICC tweaked the fielding restrictions, further reducing the number of men allowed outside the 30-yard circle. Both were fundamentally attempts to make ODIs more exciting for the T20 generation.

They worked. At first little changed, but in October 2013 India hosted Australia for seven ODIs on flat pitches, with both sides often fielding weakened bowling attacks. The series proved to be a seminal moment in the history of ODI cricket. Both scores scored gluttonously, in a way that was unprecedented in ODI cricket. In eleven completed innings, the teams made nine scores of over 300 including three of over 350, setting a ludicrous array of records - highest and second highest number of sixes in a match, series and individual innings, most runs in a six-game series, the second and third highest run chases in history - along the way. In the process, the series redefined what was considered possible in ODI cricket.

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The format’s evolution has continued ever since. By 2015, the average run rate in ODI cricket had risen to 5.50 an over. In the aftermath of that year’s World Cup, the ICC relaxed the fielding restrictions to make life more amenable for bowlers. The reform has had no tangible impact: batsmen had already become emboldened, and have continued to become fitter and stronger while honing their skills in T20 leagues, as anyone at Pune could attest. That Kedar Jadhav’s blistering 65-ball century did not dominate headlines not only reaffirmed the wonder of Virat Kohli, but also how such feats now seem almost routine.

As conditions become more batsmen-friendly, it is shifting the game. On the wickets most conducive to batting, teams increasingly favour bowling first; both captains would have chosen to chase in the first ODI, and the trend seems likely to continue thereafter in the series. “The challenge on very good wickets is to pace the innings when you’re not chasing a score,” Buttler said. “It’s tough to estimate what you need.”

Still, bowlers on these wickets must envy that problem. For they must recalibrate their expectations of what constitutes a good day’s work. “If you walk off in a score of 350 having taken none of one for 50 you’ve done a helluva job,” said Buttler with the air of a man who is rather glad he is not a bowler.

The pulsating hitting that ensues often produces thrilling sport: the spectators, including those enticed to the stadium to watch the teams train, would certainly agree. In its totality, the ODI is arguably more exciting than it has ever been.

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Yet perhaps something has been lost along the way. The game widely lauded as the best ever ODI was the World Cup semi-final in 1999, when Australia and South Africa both scored 213, with Shaun Pollock taking five wickets and Allan Donald and Shane Warne four each: not so much an elongated T20 as a one-day Test match. For all the thrill of seeing over 700 runs in a game - something that Cuttack’s slight straight boundaries suggest is eminently possible once again on Thursday - the ODI should not limit itself to games of these ilk, but rather be the format that fuses the best elements of T20 and Test cricket.

Cricket is at its most gripping when there is balance to the contest between bat and ball. In isolation batting pyrotechnics like at Pune are intoxicating, but if ODI cricket becomes simply an avenue for batsmen to gorge on bowlers for a full 50 overs, and reduces scope for bowlers to impose their will on the match, the format risks losing its competitive equilibrium. Variety, in ODI cricket as in life, should be savoured.