The ICC is con­sid­er­ing a tri­al split­ting of one-day match­es in­to two in­nings of 25 overs for each team, Dave Richard­son, the ICC's crick­et man­ag­er, has said. The idea was moot­ed by Sachin Ten­dulkar last week. "I quite like that idea, I be­lieve South Africa may tri­al some­thing along those lines," Richard­son told BBC Sport. "This might work in day-night crick­et where one team has to bat in day and the oth­er at night. It pro­vides some­thing dif­fer­ent and re­duces the ef­fects on the team who los­es the toss and has to bat first on a damp wick­et, for ex­am­ple." Richard­son be­lieved the con­cept, dis­cussed dur­ing the ICC's crick­et com­mit­tee an­nu­al meet­ing at Lord's in May, could breathe life in­to the 50-over for­mat, which has been in­creas­ing­ly threat­ened by the rise in pop­u­lar­i­ty of Twen­ty/20 crick­et.

Though two in­nings of 25 overs could lead to new strate­gies and even re­duce the in­flu­ence of win­ning the toss in favourable con­di­tions, Richard­son was ea­ger to pre­vent re­sults be­com­ing pre­dictable. His con­cern was that split­ting the in­nings could take away scor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for the bats­men. "I don't nec­es­sar­i­ly like the idea of play­ing two match­es of 25 overs each with the open­ers bat­ting again," he said. "The charm of one-day crick­et is see­ing some­one bat­ting at four and scor­ing a good hun­dred. If you bat in the mid­dle or­der of a Twen­ty/20 or a new 25-over in­nings, you're not to get much of an op­por­tu­ni­ty to hit three fig­ures, one down­side of the Twen­ty/20 game."

The clam­our for a fresh ap­proach to the one-day game has grown con­sid­er­ably with play­ers in­clud­ing Ten­dulkar 50-over games be played over two in­nings to pro­vide sim­i­lar over­head con­di­tions for both teams. Ten­dulkar said the con­tests were be­com­ing too pre­dictable be­cause re­sults of "close to 75 per cent of match­es" could be pre­dict­ed af­ter the toss.

The Eng­land and Wales Crick­et Board re­cent­ly agreed to scrap the do­mes­tic Friends Prov­i­dent Tro­phy, the on­ly 50-over do­mes­tic crick­et tour­na­ment, in favour of an ex­pand­ed Twen­ty/20 com­pe­ti­tion along with a 40-over for­mat. Crick­et South Africa are al­so like­ly to join the band­wag­on as it con­sid­ers changes to its 45-over com­pe­ti­tion. How­ev­er, Richard­son said the ex­per­i­ment would have to be suc­cess­ful at the do­mes­tic lev­el be­fore changes could be made to the in­ter­na­tion­al game. "The bot­tom line is if we can come up with a prod­uct that is bet­ter than the ex­ist­ing one, then every­one would like to look at it," he said. "If it has been tri­alled suc­cess­ful­ly at do­mes­tic lev­el, it may give the tri­al to give it the go-ahead at in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

"The ICC has been proac­tive with ideas and in­no­va­tions, like the pow­er­plays. The idea of the 'su­per-sub' (scrapped in March 2006) wasn't as suc­cess­ful and got rid of quite quick­ly. One of the crit­i­cisms was that we tri­alled things at in­ter­na­tion­al as op­posed to do­mes­tic lev­el. Our tac­tics go­ing for­ward are mem­ber coun­tries tri­al changes first do­mes­ti­cal­ly and if they are suc­cess­ful, then we can take them on board at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el." The ICC's crick­et com­mit­tee is set to meet again in 2010 when the re­sults of the ex­per­i­ment will be dis­cussed. (Cricin­fo)