Outside of ICC events, as well as matches where your favourite superstar did something special, which is the last men’s ODI you remember? Even if you do remember one by chance, can you list five such games from the 2020s?
Do not blame yourself if you have to think hard. It is not your fault that cricket’s middle format is headed towards irrelevance. These days, the people who matter want to keep it that way.
To be fair, they have had little choice. As T20 leagues forced cricket’s calendar to shrink, the ICC managed to keep Tests relevant through the flawed but relevant World Test Championship. As a result, limited-overs internationals outside the marquee tournaments were reduced to a forgettable footnote.
Cricket’s middle format has neither Test cricket’s unchallenged prestige nor T20’s cash. Full Members have to play some ODIs, but these are often blink-and-miss hyphens joining the other two formats. The ODI rankings are important for World Cup berths, but too many teams qualify directly for these bilaterals to matter. The Cricket World Cup Super League died with a whimper three years ago.
In a way, ODIs have come full circle from where they were half a century ago: few care for them outside the World Cups. For much of the last fifty years, however, they did rule the world of cricket. And triangular tournaments played a major role in that.
One can see why. Triangulars do not involve the banality of a team facing the same opposition every day. What is more, bilaterals peter out once one team takes an unassailable lead, but a triangular has a final. Fans invariably prefer a well-marketed, hyped-up Big Match to close out a contest. And the incentive of a final brings with it the thrills of qualification calculations (you remember those bonus points, right?).
Packer, Sharjah, and all thatAnnoyed by the Australian board’s refusal to grant him television rights for cricket in the nation, media mogul Kerry Packer launched World Series Cricket, an unsanctioned private cricket league. For the league to work, Packer needed cricket of the highest quality to make the fans turn away from “official” cricket. For that, he needed as many of the mighty West Indians as possible, the superpower of the time. His agents did a splendid job of recruiting enough of them to form a separate team.
This enabled Packer to launch a triangular, featuring hosts Australia, the West Indies, and a World XI. When the Australian Cricket Board eventually struck a truce, Packer insisted on replicating the idea for every home summer. And so it began.
The neutral games got over in a day. And even that day was new and exciting, played in coloured clothing with white balls even when the sun was out. Channel Nine added to the drama with state-of-the-art coverage. Most importantly, the cricket was of the highest quality. The board managed to invite the West Indies for four of the first six summers (they obviously won all four). Packer’s tournament was successful in every way the ICC’s 1912 Triangular Test tournament was not.
Something to connect these two paragraphs - like Packer lit the fuse, but things really exploded when the triangular came to South Asia…
For a few years, the concept continued only in Australia. Then in June 1983, BCCI president NKP Salve became so riled by the MCC (let us leave that story for another day) that he set his sights on bringing the 1987 World Cup home. In this ambitious task, he found allies in Nur Khan and Gamini Dissanayake, his counterparts in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. On September 19, the three boards (along with Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Singapore) founded the Asian Cricket Council, the first regional organisation that would host international cricket and generate profit.
In 1984, the three Asian Full Members met for the first Asia Cup, in Sharjah. This made the UAE the first ICC Associate Member to host international cricket, and the first country to host a cricket tournament they did not participate in.
The Asia Cup found other homes over the years, but Sharjah grew exponentially in stature as a venue. Its 255 matches are still more than 50 games clear of any other venue in the world. In the 1990s, when the centre of cricket began to shift from England to the Indian subcontinent, Sharjah evolved as the face of ODIs in Asia. Celebrities from India, Pakistan, and beyond flew down to the matches, making it the most glamorous cricketing destination long before franchise cricket came along.
The first chapter of the triangular (and, at times, quadrangular) ODI tournaments thus took place in two continents. Of the first 29 of these contests (until the end of 1992), Australia hosted 15 and Sharjah nine. Three of the other five were Asia Cups.
The 1990s also saw South Africa return from exile and immediately establish themselves as one of the best sides, while Sri Lanka grew at breakneck pace to become world champions. The pool of strong teams suddenly grew enough to have high-quality one-day cricket throughout the year. Triangular ODI contests became the fad, even beyond the traditional powerhouses.
Bangladesh and Kenya, the two fastest rising Associate Nations in the 1990s, were obvious options as eager participants, but it was not just them. Between 1996 and 2008, Full Members played triangular ODI tournaments in Singapore, Morocco, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Ireland, Scotland, and Canada.
Associates hosting 3- or 4-nation tournaments featuring Full Members (excluding Asia Cup and/or matches in Sharjah)Year
Venue
Tournament
Full Members
Associates
1996
Singapore
Singer Cup
IND, PAK, SL
1996
Kenya
KCA Centenary Tournament
PAK, SA, SL
KEN
1997
Kenya
President’s Cup
ZIM
BAN, KEN
1998
Bangladesh
Independence Cup
IND, PAK
BAN
1999
Bangladesh
Meril International
ZIM
BAN, KEN
1999
Singapore
Coca-Cola Singapore Challenge
IND, WI, ZIM
1999
Kenya
LG Cup
IND, SA, ZIM
KEN
2000
Singapore
Godrej Singapore Challenge
NZ, PAK, SA
2002
Morocco
Morocco Cup
PAK, SA, SL
2002
Kenya
PSO Tri-Nation Tournament
AUS, PAK
KEN
2004
Netherlands
Videocon Cup
AUS, IND, PAK
2006
Malaysia
DLF Cup
AUS, IND, WI
2007
Ireland
Quadrangular Series
WI
IRE, NED, SCO
2008
Scotland
Associates Tri-Series
NZ
IRE, SCO
2008
Canada
Scotiabank Series
WI
BER, CAN
2008
Kenya
Tri-Nation Tournament
ZIM
IRE, KEN
2011
Scotland
Tri-Nation Tournament
SL
IRE, SCO
2017
Ireland
Ireland Tri-Nation Series
BAN, NZ
IRE
With four years separating World Cups and the Champions Trophy struggling to find relevance, three-nation tournaments became cricket’s lifeline over this period. They produced numerous historical episodes, tactical revolutions, iconic moments, and holistic upheavals.
The list is long and diverse. Some incidents prompted changes to the Laws of Cricket as teams pushed the rules to their limits for an edge. In 1979, With three to defend off the last ball at Sydney, England captain Mike Brearley sent all his fielders to the boundary line. A year later, New Zealand needed seven off one ball when Greg Chappell ordered brother Trevor to bowl underarm. Cue shock, controversy, and attention.
What about innovations? In 1982/83, Lance Cairns strode out brandishing an Excalibur – he had the shoulder of his bat shaved off – and hit six sixes (including a one-handed one off Dennis Lillee) in the colossal MCG. Nearly a decade later, Javed Miandad used the dimensions of the WACA with characteristic efficiency to carve out an unbeaten 59 with 45 singles and no boundaries to mastermind a chase against the West Indies. In between these two, in 1986 at Sharjah, Gus Logie became the first to win a Player of the Match award for fielding.
Then there were the memories.
A young Glenn McGrath stunned a star-studded Pakistan in the 1994 Wills Triangular final at Lahore. Michael Bevan lit up New Year’s Day 1996 with the kind of chase that would inspire commentators to add the word “finisher” over the years that followed. In the same summer, Sri Lanka trial-ran Romesh Kaluwitharana at the top in Australia. Combined with Sanath Jayasuriya, this introduced the idea of hitters on both ends to open an ODI – a tactic they rode to the World Cup title a few months later. Soon after, Jayasuriya smashed the fastest ODI hundred in a triangular at a tiny ground in Singapore. But that awe-inspiring record only lasted a few months before it was overhauled by a teenager called Shahid Afridi in a Kenya quadrangular.
The 1994/95 Australian summer featured England and Zimbabwe, prompting the hosts to add Australia A to the mix to give their team more of a challenge (the two home teams played in the final). Two years later however, it was the visitors dishing out the punishment as Pakistan and the West Indies knocked Australia out at the group stage of their own series.
In 1998 amidst a desert storm, Sachin Tendulkar played one of the most famous innings of his career, adding another iconic moment to Sharjah’s ever expanding list. It came only months after England’s otherwise luckless side stunned all by winning an ODI tournament under the crafty Adam Hollioake at the same venue.
Like much else with cricket in the 1990s, England themselves were late to the party, only hosting their first triangular in 1998. It just lasted until 2005, but that included 2000 (when Zimbabwe topped the league table), 2001 (when Waqar Younis took 13 wickets in two games and Alec Stewart conceded a match), 2002 (when Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif pulled off a miracle in the final), and 2005 (when Bangladesh beat world champions Australia for the first time).
Perhaps the most defining example of the importance of triangulars came in 2003, when world champions Australia dropped the legendary Waugh brothers – stalwarts of the 1999 trophy win – from their World Cup squad. The reason? Australia had failed to make the final of a home triangular (?) a season prior and that was enough to make huge changes.
Yes, triangular tournaments mattered.
DeclineIt is not a coincidence that triangular ODI tournaments began to fade out from the late 2010s, roughly the same time when franchise leagues began to mushroom around the world. Not only did the calendar shrink for individual players but it also became increasingly difficult to get two visiting teams to tour at the same time.
Of course, it will not be right to put the blame solely on T20s.
Barring ICC and ACC competitions, India has not hosted a three- or four-nation tournament since 2003, South Africa since 2001, and New Zealand since 1995. Before 2025, Pakistan’s last such effort was the 2004 Paktel Cup. The charm had already been wearing off for some time before T20s truly took over.
But why did they stop? The ECB was criticised for scheduling a triangular (and a bilateral) in early summer of 2005, because it meant that England ended up playing 10 ODIs before the Ashes even began. That year’s final ended in a tie and England later famously won the Ashes, but in 2006 they split the summer into two bilaterals punctuated by the Test series, and have not hosted a triangular since.
What about Australia? The success of the 2007 World Twenty20 (now the T20 World Cup) meant that T20Is began to be a part of their summer calendar. That meant the generally 15-match traditional triangular had to go. That December, they announced a switch to bilaterals for “the next few years”, but the triangulars only returned twice before disappearing for good.
One can see why. Matches not featuring the hosts seldom drew crowds – on the field or in front of screens. The growing influence of broadcasters turbocharged franchise cricket. In a way, things had come full circle, for Packer and Sharjah were both also created out of broadcaster needs.
Over the past few years, the men’s game has experimented with triangular T20I tournaments. One, in 2017/18, was played across two legs, in Australia and New Zealand. Dinesh Karthik’s finishing touches to the Nidahas final in Sri Lanka became an instant YouTube hit. Aaron Finch’s 172 in Zimbabwe in 2018 is still the men’s T20I world record. Pakistan and New Zealand have both hosted these, as has Sharjah. A recent one in Namibia saw the hosts stun South Africa.
Throughout their 25-year dominance, triangular tournaments were instrumental in the evolution of ODIs and reshaping of the power of cricket’s rulers. As of now, a revival seems unlikely. But even if they do not return, they will forever have their rightful place in the history of cricket.
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