Watching cricket from my couch last week reinforced my opinion that the Twenty20 game has pushed one-day internationals off the radar for all but diehard cricket fans.

The MLC (Major League Cricket), which is the USA franchise of T20 competition, had been running since mid-June and had reached the playoffs, with the title decider played out last Sunday (NZT).

Six franchises with heavy Indian Cricket League footprints battled out the fourth MLC title over the last five weeks.

While the 30-odd games were beamed into a massive audience in India and other Asian cricket playing nations, the ground spectators were sparse, except for the MLC Grand Final which attracted more than 10,000 fans.

Fifty-odd years ago, test and first-class cricket, played over four and five days, was the staple of the game.

It is interesting to look back to what drove the beginning of one-day and T20 cricket.

One Day Internationals (ODIs) began as an afterthought, on January 5, 1971, during a test match between Australia and England at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground).

Persistent rain fell through the first three days, and to satisfy the frustrated fans, officials abandoned the test and substituted a one-off limited-overs match. The game consisted of 40 eight-ball overs, which the Aussies won by five wickets.

Such was the success of the game that it led to the first World Cup in 1975.

The then fast-paced format came of age with the creation of Kerry Packer’s rebel World Series Cricket.

It was all about television rights to the game, with the Nine Network owner taking on the establishment.

Packer turned his rebel competition into a visual spectacle, with coloured uniforms, white balls for better visibility and floodlit day-night matches, which remain today.

By contrast, T20 cricket was a commercial decision by the English Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 to counter falling county match attendances.

The ECB boldly planned 20-over-per-side matches that would be over in three hours. Few could have predicted how T20 cricket would revolutionise the game.

Back to last week’s head-to-head viewing battle between ODI and T20 cricket.

New Zealand’s Black Caps engaged in an ODI series against the West Indies in the Caribbean.

The Windies won the first encounter before our Black Caps stormed back to take out the next three matches and the series, with a dead-rubber match played on Wednesday also going the way of the hosts.

The ODIs were played at a pedestrian pace of a run a ball.

Contrast those games, which made looking at paint dry seem exciting, to the smash and bash of 20 overs per side at strike rates of more than 200 (per one hundred balls).

One of the playoff MLC matches saw the Washington Freedom chase down the MI New York’s total of 238 with eight balls to spare. However, this was just the entree to the title decider between top qualifiers the LA Knight Riders and the Washington Freedom.

The Los Angeles team were removed for 164, which looked a very gettable target. While the Freedom got away to a good start, the LA bowlers started to take wickets. The game went down to the final ball, with the Knight Riders getting home by a solitary run.

In my view, fast-paced T20 action totally outperforms the ODI game and is the future of cricket going forward, with test matches sitting comfortably to one side for the cricket purists to enjoy.