The world will be going all loco today in the highest state of its affliction called Copa Mundiale.

Some of us, including the cricket nuts of India, may not even notice a piece of news coming out of Australia. In about a month's time, though, when the world has met its new football world champion, we will know whether cricket has shifted the turf beneath its feet - again.

The buzz that Cricket Australia (CA) plans to discuss re-energising the 50-over game by splitting a team's innings into two segments of 20 overs each, may to many seem like a cop-out for Twenty20.

Indeed, triumphal laughter may even be heard in India over what will be interpreted as the impact of our favourite toy-target, the IPL. But, as they say in these parts, worry not, CA's idea seems sound and actually practical.

It may look like breaking up a cricket match into NBA-style ‘quarters', but it's not going to be the end of the ODI, or Test cricket or indeed all of cricket.

The plan may get more Aussies back into grounds and will also introduce some nuance back into the 50-over format. The original plan wants to reduce the longer version of the short game to 40 overs-a-side. The only difference that 10 overs a side will make is to reduce the length of a match by about 90 minutes. If folk begin to return to grounds for the four-innings 40-over game, they may surely stick on for the old Fifty50.

Since the advent of T20, though, the ODI particularly has looked distinctly unappetizing stuck as it is somewhere between slow cooking and fast food.

The gluttony of flat-wicket-short-boundary syndrome, most common in these parts, has often produced less match, more monotony. So any possible injection of suspense is to be welcomed like the discovery of an unreleased Hitchcock thriller.

Even Sachin Tendulkar thinks so. Just before his 20th season in international cricket, he gave an interview to my magazine India Today and talked at length about giving teams the chance to, "play their 25 overs in two lots".

The idea first came to Tendulkar after the 2002 Champions Trophy final. India and Sri Lanka had played 110 overs but there was no winner, because rain interrupted the final on two successive days, after the team batting first had completed its 50 overs. Twice.

CA is talking crowds, Tendulkar's thoughts were on cricket. ''Why not also do something which solves the problem all across the world and give teams the chance to play their 25 overs in two lots,'' he asked. ''There are times in the afternoon when the wicket is the slower side and the ball doesn't come onto the bat so it's difficult to bat.

''The spinners come into play but at night, the ball starts getting onto the bat and there is dew and you can hit through the line and the game changes.

''Even if you score 280 you can still go and chase. So why not then give 25 overs to one team and then the other side can use the 25 overs the way they want to? If you want to exhaust all your ten wickets in the first 25 overs and score 230 runs, thinking that it might rain, you can do so.

''So if you score 240 runs all down in 25 overs and the other side says fair enough I'm going to play out and play whatever 25 overs and score 150 runs, and again we start batting and it rains, you've won the game because we've scored more runs in the first 25 overs.

"You get only ten wickets in 50 overs, use them whichever way you want. That makes the game exciting ... If you get 40 overs in, you will definitely have a result."

Splitting a batting innings into 25 overs each will, right at the beginning of a game make the toss less important in tricky conditions, give teams an equal go on tracks where batting improves considerably in the second half of a match, have teams calculate exactly how to use their 10 wickets in the two segments and re-jig its batting order.

The rain scenario could actually be more Hitchcock (The Target Vanishes?): team batting first, believes the weather forecast goes for broke and is all out for 240 in 25 overs. Their rivals, the Guarded Gerrys, score 150 in their first 25, forward planning to saunter home. Then it rains and tactics are washed away by the torrent. Imagine the two captains after the game.

The 25-over break becomes a genuine ‘strategic time out'. Think of the fun the data-crunchers' would have.

There is a good chance that the BCCI may resist the change if it happens, because that's what it normally does. It even resisted Twenty20. But again, worry not. An unpartisan thought has come to the rescue: never mind the cricket, it is the increase in ad-spots which will be temptation enough for the BCCI.

All we will need then is for cricket to legalise more bouncers per over.