Cricket is played over a long period of time (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)Getty Images

Talk to someone who is not au fait with cricket and the odds are that they'll remark on how slow the sport is. And they'll be left bewildered when they find out that Test cricket is played over five days at a length that mirrors a full working week.

While Test cricket is held up on a pedestal by traditionalists, it is confined to a limited number of countries and shrinking considerably as the format dwindles in popularity in certain parts of the world.

Test cricket will never speed up. A day's play is supposed to last seven hours, but there is almost always another 30 minutes played to ensure the minimum overs are bowled. There is a lot of procrastinating involved that it is little wonder Test cricket will never grow beyond traditional borders.

But the shorter formats, especially the three-hour T20 format, are hoped to grow cricket. Despite boasting the grandiose status of being the world's second most popular sport, cricket has not spread its tentacles as far as other global sports.

The T20 format is cricket's growth engine as underlined by the launch of the much-hyped Major League Cricket in the U.S, which is hoped to fuel interest in cricket in the world's biggest sports market.

Major League Cricket had a strong first season (AP Photo/LM Otero)Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

But even the T20 format can drag beyond its timeframe. With medical research confirming that attention spans are decreasing, the T20 format might not be quite quick enough. It has spawned an even shorter game of T10 cricket - as the name suggests, half the length of T20 - but that truncated format has not been officially sanctioned by the sport's governing body.

So every effort has been made to speed up T20 matches, which can stretch to four hours in the Indian Premier League where games often finish at 11pm. To combat this and drag white-ball matches to a more accepted length, the International Cricket Council has been trialling stop clocks for men's T20 and 50-over formats over the past few months.

The shot clock docked five penalty runs for the bowling teams if they failed to start a new over within 60 seconds on three occasions during a match.

They have helped with the ICC at its quarterly board meetings this month rubber stamping the shot clock as a permanent fixture for all T20Is and ODIs from June. It will be used at the upcoming T20 World Cup co-hosted by the U.S.

The results of the stop clock trial found that around 20 minutes per ODI match had been saved in time and helped with flow.

The shot clock used in tennis sees players receiving 25 seconds to get ready to serve between points, while it has transformed game length in Major League Baseball.

A shot clock has helped quicken up baseball (Photo by Mike Carlson/MLB Photos via Getty Images)MLB Photos via Getty Images

There has long been influential backing for the shot clock. The idea of the shot clock...that's basically for the dead time in the game," Ponting said in 2018. "It's the dead time. The end of the over. The fielders and bowlers have to be back in position and that's non-negotiable."

But the shot clock won't be introduced to Test cricket with the format not likely to shorten any time soon as it continues to live up to its longform status.