In sight of Twenty20

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Like most people I was ambivalent about Twenty20 cricket. Sure, the name was eye-catching (pun unintended) but it seemed like a distraction for a guy who was only beginning to appreciate the finer nuances of test cricket. Yes, I was happy that the format had re-ignited interest in England where cricket was dying a slow death, but if I ever thought about it all in the Indian context, it must have been only in passing.

Until a few months ago. Channel-surfing, I happened onto one of those anonymous recordings on a sports channel, a South Africa-Australia game (or was it?), in which something strange was happening on the field. The captain Graeme Smith seemed to be having a running conversation with the commentary box while fielding during the game, discussing tactics. At first I was puzzled; then it dawned on me. This was clearly some fun show, somewhat on the lines of Nokia Football Crazy. The realisation that it was in fact a Twenty20 international, with the whole Cronje-earpiece-given-a-delicious-twist was enough to make me fall off the proverbial chair.

Since then, all attempts to catch it live on TV have come to nought. I even missed India's lone match during the South Africa tour last year. But like many of you, I'm happy to be carried off in this cloud of hype (happily there has been little, given India's show during the other World Cup) and I've made up my mind to make an offering of the next few evenings to the sport.

Knowing nothing about the experience of watching this format, I thought I might as well go back to the past when ODIs, or Limited Overs cricket as it was called then, had knocked on the doors of test cricket. It was with much amusement that I discovered it was a certain Geoff Boycott who faced the very first ball of the very first one-dayer in 1971. And dipping into the Wisden Anthology offered what could be seen as a parallel comment. Don Bradman, writing in the 1986 Wisden Almanac said of ODIs,

"...the Achilles' heel of the limited overs match, [is] namely the premium placed on defensive bowling and negative and defensive field-placing...But let me turn to the good thing about one-day cricket. It rids the game of the unutterable bore who thinks occupancy of the crease and his own personal aggrandisement are all that matter. It demands fieldsmen of great speed and agility with good throwing arm..."

In contrast to what many stone-faced pundits predicted, one-day cricket revitalised tests and I'm hopeful that Twenty20 will do some good for this game we love so much. But lets for the moment leave the last word to Sambit Bal who looks at all angles in this excellent piece,

"...For the true lover of the game, Twenty20 deviates from cricket's central, most appealing qualities: the length, the leisurely pace, the turns in the plot, the contest between bat and the ball, and the individual contests within the team game."