Johannesburg, Sept. 19: The light here, in southern Africa, has a different quality to it, sharper, more luminous. And the sky looks bigger. Maybe it is the proximity of this land to the Equator, but horizons here stretch much further than Indian eyes are used to.

Some of that light and broader vision is what the International Cricket Council is desperately searching for to rescue 50 overs a side cricket, which is floundering in the face of the T20 assault. In that sense, much rides on the success — or failure — of the 2009 Champions Trophy, which gets under way in three days time.

In commercial terms this event may have already earned its keep including enhanced prize money of $4 million. It has attracted a fair number of global and local sponsors and the ICC will desperately be hoping that the quality of cricket here will help boost its claim that all three forms of the game — Tests ODIs and T20 — can co-exist.

Yet it is clear that a threat exists. Besides the international 20 overs a side game, the success of the Indian Premier League has added to talk that ODIs have reached their sell-by date. Four national boards have now come together to promote the Champions League that will be played in India immediately after this event, and new T20 projects seem to be popping up like mushrooms in a forest after a shower.

Adding weight to doomsday forecasts are weighty voices like Sachin Tendulkar’s, who has gone on record to say that 50-50 cricket has become so predictable that the toss in many cases can decide the course of a match. The recent tri-series in Sri Lanka thereafter did ODIs a further disservice by proving Tendulkar right!

Of course, not everyone is of the same opinion as the master blaster and his former skipper and idol, Kapil Dev, for one feels there is no need to tinker with ODIs and break it up into two components of 25 overs each as Tendulkar has suggested.

These are however, straws in the wind. With the international calendar so cramped already and more and more T20 tournaments vying for time slots, the ICC knows that unless it can provide a stage for some good cricket that will bring global audience interest back to ODIs, pressure on it to cut into the ODI schedule to accommodate more T20 events will mount.

As it is, this is quite possibly the last edition of the Champions Trophy, conceived and pushed through at a time the administrators were looking to maximise what could be squeezed out of what was then the cash cow, the limited overs international.

If it does go, few will lament the passing of what was born as the ICC knockout tournament 11 years ago when South Africa won the 1998 event.

With the world T20 championships now scheduled once every two years, and the need to provide the World Cup with some much-needed lustre after the fiasco of 2007, the ICC will have its collective fingers crossed in hoping the likes of Tendulkar, Ponting and other stars of the day have a profitable run under the wide open African skies.