Excess of Twenty20 cricket: beneficial or detrimental?

The Biennial ICC Twenty20 World Cup 2012 is in progress in Sri Lanka. But the debate rages on whether the advent of twenty-twenty cricket has helped the game in any way. Or has it just been a commercial gimmick banking on the talent of cricketers to generate huge sums of cash, and fill the pockets of the corporate biggies? Cricket fans seem to be divided on this and the same goes with the former and modern-day cricketers.

Before we get into arguing the impact of T20 cricket, let’s take a look at the reasons leading to the birth of the T-20 version of “The Gentleman’s game”. In 2003, County cricket was suffering from poor viewership and lack of sponsorship deals. The English and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) devised a plan to rejuvenate the crowd attendance, which would automatically pull in the sponsors. The marketing manager of the ECB, Stuart Robertson conceived the idea of the Twenty-Twenty format wherein the matches can been played in the evening session and completed within 3 hours. This would ideally provide the people with entertainment post-work and even allow them to bring their families to the games.

Once the format was accepted by the counties, the defunct Benson and Hedges cup (B&H cup), a typical one-day format tournament was replaced by the inaugural T20 championship. Sussex versus Hampshire was the first ever T20 game played in County Cricket. The tournament turned out to be a huge success commercially and the participation of the crowd was also remarkable due to the excitement generated by the new format. The final played in Lords drew in crowds of over 27,500, which was the highest for any county cricket game at the famous ground since 1953.

The rest of the cricketing world soon accepted the format after the initial skepticism and the T20 format meteorically rose to the level of being the most-popular version of cricket. 2007 saw the first ICC Twenty20 World cup held in South Africa, which revamped the world cricketing culture with high-energy pop-artiste performances and eye-catching cheer-leading dance troupes gyrating to the beats of the DJ’s in the stadiums. The T-20 with all its “masala” had announced itself to the sporting world and was here to stay.

What was the reception? The crowd had fallen head-over-heels for it, no doubt. But the cricket purists took a fastidious stance towards the shortest version of cricket. The un-orthodoxy the game brought was refreshing and made cricket a better spectacle, but the technical tweaks it introduced weren’t something to pick up for a budding cricketer.

The Cricket calendar had a new event enrolled in 2008 in the form of IPL and it spawned a string of local T20 tournaments throughout the test-playing nations. The KFC Big-Bash in Australia, Bangladesh Premier League, the recent Sri Lankan Premier League, MiWay T20 challenge in South Africa amongst others. The war-torn nation of Afghanistan, still a novice to the game of cricket, also has its version of IPL which is the Afghanistan Provincial Twenty20 Tournament. Interestingly, Afghanistan put up a convincing display against India in the 2012 ICC Twenty20 World Cup which was their ICC tournament debut.

Looking further, on the brighter side countries like Canada, USA and European football-powerhouse Netherlands have taken to cricket due to the appealing nature of the T20 format. Also, another positive to come out has the improvement in fielding standards and overall athleticism. All this can be attributed to the T20 boom but again has the game of cricket really benefitted?

Renowned cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle in his article “Test cricket, we have a problem” laments about the dearth of emerging world-class test batsmen in world cricket after 2006. According to him, only England’s Jonathan Trott falls into the world-class category having broken into the scene in 2009. Whatever the promoters of T20 say, the fact remains that the T-20 cricket is causing cricketers to participate in more cricket matches than before, which is affecting their performances in the longer versions of the game.

The regular team players have to play around 30-35 matches a year inclusive of all formats of the game. An overdose of cricket makes the players more susceptible to physical injuries and burnout caused by mental fatigue. Yes, the players are professionals but the human body has its limits and a player can’t perform at his best all the time. The huge amount of money involved is also making certain players quit other forms of game to focus on T-20. Now, who would not want to earn huge sums of cash just by playing in games which last no more than 3 hours instead of slogging for 5 days? Sri Lankan fast bowler Lasith Malinga quit test cricket in order to focus on T20 cricket. Chris Gayle has kept himself unavailable to the West Indies side for quite some time and has attained a legendary status in T-20 domain.

Team India themselves have suffered due to the congestion of matches having put a dismal effort in defending their T20 World Cup in 2009, as the World Cup was played immediately after the IPL ended. Gary Kirsten and Dilip Vengsarkar had raised their voices in the aftermath of India’s performance to BCCI to reschedule the IPL and may be compress the length of it so that the players have more time to recover before major tournaments.

The Indian test team, at times, has looked completely disinterested in certain games. The 4-0 defeat while touring England in September 2011, and another horrendous show “down under” in December 2011 asks serious questions of the commitment of Indian players while playing test matches. The glamour of T-20 and the chance of making easy money lures the young cricketers throughout the world. But can they sacrifice the pure techniques and forge a lasting cricket career by just relying on T-20’s and ODIs? Cricketing greats have been tested in the toughest of circumstances and Test Cricket is the ultimate examination for any cricketer, be it a bowler or a batsman.

The mental and the environmental challenges of Test cricket can’t be replicated by twenty-twenty. That’s what truly defines a cricketing talent. The promoters of the “hit and bang” cricket may have intentions of creating a niche for T-20 cricket but if cricket has to prosper, the calendar needs to be rescheduled and focus has to be put on delivering quality in the test cricket and ODI arena.

No one wants to banish T-20. It can certainly co-exist, but the priority should be given to real cricket. Test cricket surely will not lose out on its followers, but the cricketing fraternity needs to make a call on the number of T-20 matches scheduled. The cricket audience’s interest in ODIs has been on the decline due to T-20, and the ICC and the national cricket boards need to take measures to rekindle the viewer’s interest in the 50-over format. The biennial T-20 World Cup seems to be a bad idea as it might lead to saturation of cricket. Counting from year 2009, we have had four ICC World Cups in succession. The IPL, post the 2011 World Cup, was not as exciting as the previous versions mainly because its timing. The supporters seemed bored by too much of cricket.

The ICC should see the larger picture and focus on the importance of cricket as a game and not as some commercial activity to make profits. Whatever commercial profits are made through T-20 by the various cricketing boards should be utilized in improving the standards of domestic cricket in their respective nations. The youngsters should be inspired to take up cricket not just for money but for the love of the game.