"Baseball is better than cricket."

These were my last words to Gary, the Aussie bartender, at the arse end of a Halloween party I attended the other night.

"You've had too much to drink, mate. Go home," was the curt response fired back at me. He may have been right, but as the saying goes, the truth often comes out when you're juiced. The fact that he took offense to my comment is also fairly understandable, since his country claims to be the best team in cricket, and, as a South African and a member of another top cricket-playing nation, I should have been under no illusions as to where my allegiance lay.

The debate is not restricted to the confines of the bar either, as the topic has been raised on more than one occasion in the office. Complaints have been made by readers about the lack of cricket coverage on our sports pages and that baseball gets too much play. Others say that cricket shouldn't even make it onto our pages but I won't go there.

Maybe it's all the excitement of the World Series over the last few days that has clouded my judgment -- after all, I grew up playing cricket and have never even raised a baseball bat in anger.

My mates will probably never speak to me again and I will probably get some abuse from some of the lads in the office over this one and, who knows, maybe Gary will never serve me another drink, but since I've gone this far let me run through a few fundamental shortcomings that cricket has in comparison to its American "version." (Baseball originated as a combination of cricket with its innings and umpires and another British game, rounders with its bases.)

Cricket tests last for a maximum of five days and often end in a "no result." A lot of cricket followers will argue here that some of the best games have ended in draws but I struggle to buy that argument. In this day and age, with people having lower attention spans and with such a premium on time, to spend five days watching a sport only for it to end in a draw seems a little excessive.

Five-day tests are the benchmark by which a cricketing nation is judged, yet the World Cup is based on a one-day format which differs vastly from the five-day version. The official World Champion is, therefore, not necessarily the best team in the world as one-day cricket is considered to be a bit of a lottery.

For those of you not familiar with cricket, the one-day game is a highly entertaining version of cricket in which each side faces a maximum of 50 overs each in their innings. One "over" consists of six balls. In test cricket there are no "over" restrictions and one team has to get the other team out in two innings, each consisting of 10 wickets (outs), within the space of five days, scoring more runs than its opponent in the process.

Herein lies one of the fundamental problems of cricket: the game seems to be caught between the two versions. The one-day game is played in front of packed audiences and is a real crowd pleaser. It only lasts eight hours, is played under floodlights, the players wear brightly-colored clothes, there's music, and the game inevitably produces a result.

Sounds like baseball doesn't it?

So what's the problem then?

The traditionalists radically oppose this form of cricket as the skills required in the one-day game do not resemble those required in the five-day game. Patience, the ability to maintain a high level of concentration for a long period of time and to be able to outmaneuver and outwit your opponent over a five-day period are the essential qualities required in order to succeed at test level. None of these characteristics are needed in the one-day game. Yet the one-day game is the one that is making most of the money, in effect supporting the unions that tend to lose money on the drawn-out and often rain-affected tests that don't produce results.

In between tests and one-day games, touring test-playing countries are obliged to play a minimum of 3-5 meaningless three-day games against local opposition. The three-day version of the game is the worst of the lot as it is even more difficult to produce a result, the rules being the same as in tests but with much less time to finish the game. Nobody watches these games and nobody cares about them, which begs the question, why do they exist?

No such confusion exists in the game of baseball. It may be argued that too many games are played in a season (each team competes in 162 games during the regular season in Major League Baseball and this may be extended by as many as 19 in the postseason; in Japan the season consists of 140 games per team in the regular season and a maximum of seven games in the postseason) but the fans regularly pack the stadiums. The Seattle Mariners filled their 47,000-seat stadium and the major league average attendance for 2001 was 30,700. Not bad when you consider games are played almost every day.

Anyone who watched the recent World Series between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks would be unable to argue with the fact that the series had everything that makes a sport great: loads of action and drama, great plays and tactical moves, full-house attendances with fans that played a significant role in the outcome of some of the games, tradition and arguably the best team winning in the end. The people who run Major League Baseball seem to have the right mix there.

The same cannot be said of the International Cricket Council (ICC). Described by cricket journalists as being "spineless," the ICC is more like an old boys club where the members seem more interested in their afternoon tea and biscuits than the development of the sport. Progress is rarely made and action is rarely taken. Long before the recent match-fixing scandals rocked the integrity of the sport, the ICC had had some knowledge of persistent allegations of match-fixing yet chose to turn a blind eye to it.

The point is not that the game of cricket is inferior to baseball -- I would never concede that -- it's just that its structure is flawed and lacks imagination and significant changes need to be made. Like in baseball, the ICC needs to bring the game to the people with a middle ground being found between the one-day game and the five-day game or even a straight choice between the two.

Unfortunately, there's more chance of their tea getting cold than this ever happening.