When rain robbed the paying public of a substantial part of an Ashes Test in Australia in 1970-71, the two teams agreed to a last-day face-off in a reduced 40-overs-a-side match. Australia won the game comfortably by five wickets. And so did the format. The stands had nearly 50,000 people that day cheering every stroke and applauding every wicket. International limited overs cricket was born.
The subsequent success of the 1975 World Cup in England ensured that the abbreviated form of the sport, no matter what the purists said, would never again be frowned upon, certainly not by people who wanted cricket to be in good commercial health all around the world. The gentleman?s game changed forever.
Now, more than three decades later, the game of cricket is on the verge of another makeover. Whether it?s for the better or worse only time will tell. An even shorter version of cricket is set to receive an official boost as twelve countries gear up to vie for the International Cricket Council-sponsored Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa from September 11. The question is: will this be the beginning of a new era in the evolution of cricket or will T20 remain what it is perceived to be by many sceptics ? merely a slam-bang variety of the game that might be fun while it lasts but cannot ever be taken seriously?
Columnist and former cricketer Peter Roebuck has captured the scepticism that a part of the world still has towards Twenty20: ?Frankly, it is hard to take seriously an event so dependent on tomfoolery. Indeed it counts amongst the attractions of this brief version of the game that it does not look towards the more doleful of the intellectuals for applause? Spectators plunge into bubble baths, loud music plays and batsmen swash and buckle furiously. It is hard to imagine Jean-Paul Sartre thinking much of it, or Ibsen.?
The venerable gentlemen Roebuck mentions in his column might certainly not have any patience for Twenty20 cricket, but cricketers around the world seem to be warming up quite enthusiastically for the upcoming battle even though quite a few teams in the fray are in a bit of disarray as a result of injuries and player-administration differences. Adam Gilchrist, who is likely to lead Australia in the absence of Ricky Ponting, has told reporters in South Africa: ?There?s been nothing up for grabs in the other Twenty20 games we?ve played so far. They?ve been more like exhibition matches, but this is very different and we?re all going to learn a lot.?
Indeed, for most teams, especially those from the subcontinent, the Twenty20 World Cup will be the first serious shot at this new form of the game. So it will all be about making quick adjustments. Sri Lankan skipper Mahela Jayawardene says, ?When one-day cricket was just beginning, there was a school of thought that Test players would not necessarily make good one-day players and this is still the case in many instances. But there are exceptions and I expect the same will apply to Twenty20 cricket.?
ICC?s motivation behind pushing Twenty20 cricket is quite obvious: the game?s governing body wants to draw more people?and countries?into its folds. In a simplified, faster, more crowd-pleasing avatar, the game, it is felt, will travel better around the world. The inaugural Twenty20 World Cup will be telecast in China of all places.
Malcolm Speed, ICC?s chief executive, has been quoted as saying: ?My dream is that before my lifetime I will be able to see India and China playing against each other in Test cricket.? Incredible as that may sound, Twenty20 cricket can indeed be the best way to get the world?s most populous nation hooked on to cricket. Knowing the Chinese sporting establishment?s ability to churn out champions in virtually every discipline the nation takes up, it might not be as impossible a dream as it might seem at this point of the game?s history.
That apart, three-hour cricket ? Twenty20 matches allow each team only 75 minutes to bowl out the requisite number of overs ? fits in perfectly with not only the hectic pace of contemporary life but also with television?s need to cram in as much excitement as possible into its prime-time evening slot. Just imagine getting India and Pakistan to an offshore venue ? Toronto has been tried before, if only in a longer version of the game ? for matches that start at 7 pm India time and wind up by 10 pm. It would make for fantastic reality TV and make a huge captive audience available to advertisers.
The advent and growth of Twenty20 cricket has been driven entirely by necessity. It was launched in England in 2003 against the backdrop of falling attendances for county matches, a problem similar to the one that 40 years ago had given birth to the Gillette Cup, the domestic game?s original one-day competition. The first inter-county Twenty20 Cup was promoted with the slogan: ?I don?t like cricket, I love it.? It was obviously aimed at the fence-sitting youth rather than at the cricket connoisseur. Twenty20 cricket isn?t really for the converted.
In the five years that Twenty20 cricket has been on the English circuit, many players have mastered the format and become specialists ? men like Adama Hollioake, Jeremy Snape and Mark Butcher. These are cricketers who, in other forms of cricket, haven?t had a fraction of the success they have enjoyed in Twenty20 matches for their counties.
If one-day cricket is instant cricket, T20 is instant cricket plus. It?s less a game, more a carnival, like all those friendlies of yore in which sixers and fours were hit at will and fielding sides were sent on a merry leather hunt. Well, it?s probably not quite as frivolous as that. In Twenty20 cricket every ball is a moment of reckoning. It isn?t easy for a batsman to hit every delivery out of the park. Neither is it simple for a bowler to rein in a batsman who is on the rampage because that is the only way in which he is allowed to play the game. It?s a game for the nimble-footed and the quick-thinking. For Twenty20 cricket is as much a battle of skills as any other form of the game. Only, it lasts for just two and a half hours. It is a game in which, because of its brevity, players cannot afford to make mistakes.
On how quickly and how completely the rest of the cricketing world takes to this format of the game will hinge its future. The ICC, on its part, has already drawn up a fairly detailed road map. The second Twenty20 World Cup is scheduled for 2009, ICC?s centenary year, in England and Wales. Thereafter, cricket?s governing body plans to host one or two more Twenty20 World Cup events, depending on the success of the first two editions.
The signs on the ground seem positive and the format gaining in popularity. It has been winning converts of late. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which has never faced the problem of dwindling gate receipts, had been holding out against Twenty20 for several years. But now it is planning a two-tier Twenty20 domestic tournament, thanks, of course, to the emergence of Subhash Chandra?s rebel Indian Cricket League.
Aussie captain Ricky Ponting, too, has abandoned his cynical views about Twenty20 cricket. When England recently inflicted a 100-run defeat on Australia in a Twenty20 game, Ponting had laughed away the reverse. He wasn?t willing to take the game seriously enough to be perturbed by the defeat. But, before talk of his withdrawing from the first Twenty20 World Cup for ?family reasons? surfaced, he had said: ?It?s cricket for us, and we?ve got to prepare as best as we can. We?re preparing to win the Twenty20 World Championship.?
There?s a worry that Twenty20 is essentially loaded in favour of batsmen. But South African captain Graeme Smith isn?t so sure that would be the case in the inaugural World Cup. ?I?m unsure whether batsmen are going to totally dominate. No one really knows what conditions are going to be like at this time of year,? he told reporters in Johannesburg.
?If they are good, then batsmen could have a field day because the ball travels far up here on the Highveld and our stadiums are smaller than elsewhere in the world. But bowlers? skills are improving all the time and with slower balls and bouncers coming into play, I think they could have a big say as well,? he said.
Another assumption that might take a bit of a knock pertains to the perceived unsuitability of veterans to Twenty20 cricket. Jayawardene has already singled out the war-scarred Sanath Jayasuriya as Sri Lanka?s trump card at the top of the order even as India?s Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid have turned their backs on the format.
A host of oldies seem primed for Twenty20 glory (see box). Admittedly, slower legs on the field may be a distinct advantage, but this game is about batting and bowling skills above all else. So batsmen like Adam Gilchrist, Kevin Pietersen, Shahid Afridi and Chris Gayle, none of them young newcomers, are expected to have a field day in South Africa. If they really do, Twenty20 will be the biggest winner.