When one day cricket was introduced in the form of Prudential world cup in 1975 many believed that test cricket will never survive. This became even more a reality when Kerry Packer formed his own circus weaning away great players with the lure of money when test playing nations were forced to play with second rate teams. Later on ICC made a truce and allowed those renegades to play for their country. One day cricket had its owns ebbs and flows and test cricket survived.

Later on mafia took interest in this game and match fixing scandals began to surface. ICC took a tough stand banned players but could not stop the mafia from taking a toll of the game. The sub continent where the game has a lot of fan following was a money mint where bookies made bets in thousand of crores of rupees and facilitated match fixing with the lure of money. in India one of the most tainted politicians and one of the fearsome Maratha warhorse Sharad Pawar ascended to the chair of BCCI and there started the decline.

Lalit Modi is alleged to have minted money through many of his holdings in franchises and through various dubious means including media rights. One should remember Modi was eulogized for having popularized the shortened version of the game T20 and making IPL a grand commercial success. T 20 is all gamble with unlikeliest of the teams always managing to win. T20 has improved the reflexes of the players but the game has taken a beating. More and more betting and mafia interest has killed the game. It is now learnt thatUPA is trying to use this to silence Pawar who has been dictating terms to Congress Party. Well one should save the colonial game- I was a great follower of this game until Kapil Dev hung up his boots and until Saurav was haunted out of the game- from the clutches of Sharad Pawar.