While taking the Labrador for his walk on Saturday morning, it dawned on me that I’d completely forgotten about the first Twenty20 International between South Africa and Australia, which South Africa managed to win by 4 wickets.
I hadn’t necessarily intended to watch the match from the Wanderers ground in Johannesburg, played early Saturday morning our time, but I usually have a pretty good grasp of what cricket is being played around the globe.
Actually, my wife would argue it’s too good a grasp. (And to the cricketers out there, do you hear the same tone as I do when the words “I’m a cricket widow” are mentioned?)
Anyway, this minor lapse in the telepathic cricket calendar got me wondering about the international status of the shortest form of cricket, its place in the grand scheme of things, and really, does anyone give a bugger about it?
Think about this. In virtually all the major cricket playing nations of the world – and probably even some of the minor nations – domestic Twenty20 competitions are killing it, easily drawing the biggest crowds, television audiences, and of course, revenue.
Competitions based on counties, states, provinces, and now particularly corporate owned franchises, exist and succeed on most continents.
Texan billionaire Allen Stanford did his best to create the ultimate corporate (and somewhat self-indulgent) cricket competition in the Caribbean; that was of course until the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fraud investigators caught up with him.
But not even the fallen Stanford can compete with the bigger and much more corporate juggernaut that is the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Though despite all this domestic success, and ongoing planning for future growth in the various markets, the international game remains quite small, limited to one-off games or token two-match “series”. The four-year T20 World Cup cycle has been created, but generally, T20 Internationals are played as lead-ins to the “traditional” limited overs series.
I don’t particularly mind that the international games are limited in number, but I’m thinking that they either seem to be getting lost among the standard 50-over matches, or more likely, the T20I matches are just losing their gloss.
Last week’s news surrounding the relocation of the 2009 IPL tournament reinforces my theory.
Because of the high security demands for the month-long Indian general elections, the IPL has been forced to temporarily ignore what the “I” stands for, with the tournament to be now played in South Africa from April 18. With the final locked in for May 24, a staggering 59 matches will be played in just 36 days.
And then, once all the players heads stop spinning, the T20 World Cup begins in England, at Lord’s on June 5.
But will anyone be still watching by then, or will we all be Twenty20’d out?
It would seem to me that the obvious push to make T20 cricket a legitimate international game – and it’s even been suggested that T20 is precisely the vehicle to finally bring China and the US aboard the global cricket train – could actually have the opposite effect.
Could it be a case of the domestic competitions killing off the international game?
Remember too, that we still haven’t played the inaugural Champions T20 League yet, a tournament that was to have brought together the top teams from England, South Africa, Australia, Pakistan, and the IPL, but was postponed indefinitely after the December 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Also, planning is theoretically still under way to establish a Super 14-style Southern Premier League from 2011.
Where will all this T20 fit into an already crowded Test and ODI schedule?
Surely, logically if not logistically, something has to give.
One-Day International cricket must remain to maintain that bridge between the pure, traditional Test Match game, and it’s infant, bling-wearing sibling.
So if the corporate/domestic T20 competitions around the globe show no sign of retreat, then maybe it’s the international version that can easily be dispensed with.
And perhaps then, my telepathic cricket calendar won’t be so overloaded.
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