Two months ago, the critics panned another one-day series. After a hard-fought Ashes battle, England and Australia drove around the country playing each other in seven one-day games. The players said it was tiring but one team seemed more tired than the other! Again it produced full houses and it seems things are a bit like in the movie industry where big ticket films routinely get trashed by the critics and deliver good numbers at the box-office. So have columnists, commentators and critics lost touch with popular taste? Is the format under siege? Or do we need to delve deeper?

In recent times I have been lucky to be at two superbly organised, highly competitive cricket tournaments that delivered average returns at the box-office. The Champions Trophy in South Africa and the Champions League T20 produced quality cricket, some of it seriously good, but found audiences, both at the ground and in front of a television set, very choosy about which games to patronise. An England vs Australia semi-final couldn’t fill a relatively small ground at Centurion and non-home franchise games were poorly attended at the Champions League till the semi-final and the final where admission was easier than it has ever been in India.

So it does seem that it is the identity of the teams rather than the quality of cricket that seems to count for more. Where every game is a home game, crowds have been enthusiastic and ratings have been decent. Neutral games have floundered a bit. But remember too that the two series, England vs Australia and India vs Australia, have something else to offer. With the first there is a traditional rivalry that seems to rise above the occasional mismatch and with the second, there is a promise of combative cricket and an evolving antagonism that is sometimes good for sales! Maybe dreary games between teams that don’t excite the senses are the ones to worry about; maybe New Zealand vs Pakistan in Abu Dhabi will give us more clues. Maybe, like with most things, the context is critical.

But if we are indeed moving to the conclusion that bilateral games where one of the teams is playing at home is where audience interest lies, it has worrying implications for the ICC which organises multi-country tournaments at one venue.

It is these events that generate the revenue the ICC needs for its functioning but more critically, for the development of the game in newer markets. So if the value of these games drops, and it will automatically be reflected in sponsorship and television revenue, it could have implications for tier 4,5 and 6 games where teams cannot survive without financial support from the ICC. Already we have seen Scotland, Ireland and Holland playing better cricket because of more competition; and we have seen the spectacular arrival of Afghanistan. It helps that the ICC has a television deal in place till 2015 but if evidence continues to mount in favour of the bilateral one-day or T20 game, the next round of rights could deliver lower revenues.

And if the IPL continues to deliver good returns for its stakeholders, not just broadcasters but advertisers and ground sponsors, that will mean more money sucked out of the global game and towards the local game. We could end up in a situation, to some extent prevalent already, where the game has large, influential local dynasties and a relatively loose, powerless centre. And I am not only talking about India which continues to be the engine for the game, but England, Australia and South Africa. In fact, almost certainly, the England-South Africa games later this year will find greater support than the Champions Trophy did and the India-South Africa one-day series in February will give us more pointers towards where the game is headed. As indeed will the numbers from Australia who host Pakistan and the West Indies.