The bore-a-minute ODIs, and twin hundreds in defeats

ODIs on the decline
A leisurely game of cricket played before three men and a dog might be a lovely descriptor for a low-key county match, but if one-day cricket in England doesn't get an urgent fillip, there could be exactly those many turning up for an ODI in the future. In an age where the slickly packaged Twenty20 has been striding up the popularity charts, the original shorter version of the game has done its utmost to ensure that spectators steer clear of anything to do with it.

Any person marketing one-day cricket would probably want to quit his job after watching the weather-ruined, hopelessly one-sided NatWest Series. Three matches were washed out, while three others finished with 17, 32 and 28 overs to spare - hardly the kind of games that would get the spectators thronging the stadiums. The three remaining matches can be termed contests only in comparison to the preceding ODIs - on each occasion, the team chasing won quite handily, with enough unspent recources.

In fact, a look at one-dayers played in England over the last five seasons reveals that there have been few memorable contests. Of 45 games, only eight have been decided by a margin of fewer than 20 runs or have gone into the last over. On the other hand, there are a plethora of one-sided results: on 27 occasions, teams have won either by a margin of greater than 40 runs or with more than four overs to spare. Also, the early morning conditions have been far too much in favour of the bowlers to ensure an even contest - teams chasing a target have won almost three-quarters of the matches since 2000 (33 out of 45).

One-day cricket in England desperately needs a boost, and a thrilling finale on Saturday - even though the hosts won't feature in the game - wouldn't be a bad start. For a prototype of a dream match, jog your memory back to the 2002 final, when Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif scripted one of the most memorable run-chases of all time. The organisers wouldn't mind something slightly less dramatic, but their nightmare would be a repeat of the 2003 final: on a pitch ideally suited for seam bowling, England won the toss, inserted South Africa, bundled them out for 107, and then galloped past the target in 20.2 overs. Another similar early finish, and the organisers might well force the teams to turn up for a 20-over game.

Twin centuries in losing causes
When the two Andrews - Flintoff and Strauss - came together and belted hundreds in England's last match, must-win league game against West Indies, it seemed England would sneak in a place in the final: after all, only on 11 previous occasions had two batsmen scored centuries in an ODI and yet ended up on the wrong end of the result. Well, Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan's blitz ensured that the tally went up to 12, and just the second such instance for England - the only previous occasion this happened was in that famous NatWest Series final in 2002, when Marcus Trescothick and Nasser Hussain were upstaged by the Yuvraj-Kaif duo.

It was a rare occurrence for England, but certainly not for the Indians, who have been involved in 10 out of these 12 ODIs. On six of those occasions they have ended up victorious, including the earliest such game, in 1982-83 at Lahore. More recently, on their tour to Australia earlier this year, they ended up on either end of the result in consecutive matches: after coming up short against Australia despite centuries from VVS Laxman and Yuvraj at Sydney, they triumphed against a spirited Zimbabwean team at Adelaide, who lost by an agonising three runs after hundreds by Stuart Carlisle and Sean Ervine.