One Day International Cricket (ODI)Is a limited over version of the game. Each side bats a max of 50 overs. It is usually played as a "Day-Night" game commencing at 2:00PM local time and continuing into the night played under lights. The advent of suitable lighting for these events has been an event in itself. Cricket requires especially good lighting.. initially stadium lighting was NOT good enough apart from only one or two stadia..... now most countries have stadia suitable for night cricket and other sports.
Even so... the normal RED cricket ball was too hard to pick up under artificial light and so a WHITE ball was provided, and there was controversy and experimentation as to what ball was suitable.
This form of the game lends itself to a more popular following.....
From WikepediaQuote:
In the late 1970s, Kerry Packer established the rival World Series Cricket (WSC) competition, and it introduced many of the features of One Day International cricket that are now commonplace, including coloured uniforms, matches played at night under floodlights with a white ball and dark sight screens, and, for television broadcasts, multiple camera angles, effects microphones to capture sounds from the players on the pitch, and on-screen graphics. The first of the matches with coloured uniforms was the WSC Australians in wattle gold versus WSC West Indians in coral pink, played at VFL Park in Melbourne on 17 January 1979. Kerry Parker was credited with making cricket a more professional sport.
When this all started in the 70's... old farts foretold doom and the end of Cricket... regarded the coloured uniforms as teams "playing in pyjamas" since traditionally both teams wear white (or cream)
Quite the opposite occurred. It is still a HUGELY popular form of the game.