Twenty20 cricket - it's fun and true to the traditions of the game

There is nothing inauthentic about Twenty20

There are plenty of traditionalists who treat Twenty20 with barely disguised contempt. One of these was the much missed Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer who said about Twenty20 a short while before his untimely death that "I hate the game. I'll be honest: I think it's an absolute abortion of cricket." In the musty corridors of the Lord's pavilion there will be many who will share that sentiment. Mind you MCC members have never really embraced any one day cricket as the swaths of empty seats at the One Day International on Sunday showed! But the true cricket aficionados should not really turn their noses up at Twenty20 - it's as authentic as any other form of the game.

Cricket is unique in being able to be played in an almost unlimited variety of forms. Test matches have been played over 3,4,5,6 or even more days and in India women's domestic cricket has two-day matches. And in the one day form of the game there is no sacrosanct template. When one day professional cricket started in England in 1963 it was 65 overs a side and in the very first match, in the first ever innings, Lancashire scored 304 runs at a very respectable (even by today's standards) 4.7 runs an over. To plan for such a 130 overs match in a day with today's lethargic over rates might not be possible, but for the crowd the English Twenty20 finals day, when both semi-finals and the final are played in one day (120 overs), is about as entertaining as it gets.

Twenty20 is customer driven

One of the most important messages for any marketer (sadly oft forgotten) is to produce products that customers actually want to buy rather than those which the factory owners want to produce. So if Twenty20 brings the punters in then that is proof that the product is pretty good. So why have some international boards, notably that of India, been rather reluctant to embrace Twenty20? The answer is that for these boards the main source of revenue is not from ticket sales but from advertising and sponsorship and here the very short form of the game is at a disadvantage. If you can promote your commercial messages on television for 100 overs in a One Day International why would you support cutting that to only 40 overs in a Twenty20 match?

One Day cricket needs a rethink

Of the 51 matches played in this year's interminable Cricket World Cup perhaps only three were memorable and closely contested. The 50 over form of the game is often predictable and frankly quite boring. At Lord's last Sunday England and the West Indies scored 371 runs between them over a total of 90 overs at a pedestrian 4.1 runs per over - and there were only 25 boundaries in the entire day. Admittedly these two teams share a cluelessness about one day cricket that justifiably sees them in seventh and eighth places in the world rankings. But even given this ineptness it was still pretty dire stuff. Two days earlier at the Oval the same two teams had played a Twenty20 international in which 342 runs were scored at 8.5 runs per over and during which their were 39 boundaries. The dull One Day International match lasted all day - the Twenty20 match about three hours. As a spectator how would you rather spend your precious leisure time?

The ICC and the cricket boards need to rethink One Day International cricket. There is a real risk that the visceral attractions of Twenty20 will be such that it will quickly supplant the 50 over game, and that would be a shame. At the top level cricket has to be more than just "hit and run" - entertaining though that is for spectators. But if the attention of today's spectators and TV viewers is to be maintained the current one day 50 over format just won't do. It may be that there is a new format crying out to be defined which could somehow take the best of the 50 over game and of Twenty20 and create something that will please both spectators and the commercial interests which drive the game. The subject certainly needs to be top of the ICC's agenda.