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T20 is Cricket, but not as we know it

Roar Guru
1st January, 2016
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Twenty20 cricket is here to stay. (AFP PHOTO/ PUNIT PARANJPE)
Roar Guru
1st January, 2016
33

Not everyone likes T20 cricket. Frankly, a lot of people can’t stand it.

These people have no vested interest; no agenda, hidden or otherwise. Plain and simple: they don’t like it.

For many cricket anoraks, their formative years were spent watching men in white playing with a red ball. ODIs held a special aura for them too, until they worked out the difference. Most would remember crackly ABC radio updates every 30 minutes from Faisalabad. Some (possibly including your correspondent) began following South African politics just to get an early read on any inflection point for readmission.

So what about T20? Good question.

While monitoring Jacques’s waistline is compelling viewing, and Watto dragging off his creaking frame after another LBW Groundhog Day never gets old, T20 feels like cricket played in another universe.

The game needs bat and ball to each stand a fighting chance. In T20, bats are seven centimetres thick, ropes are 25 metres in, and pitches are about as bowler friendly as day two in Adelaide. There isn’t the hint of a contest. It’s like baseball’s Home Run Derby. Except it’s serious.

Or we’re told that it’s serious, that the world will stop for six weeks and that it really, really matters.

It should surprise nobody that the media talks up the concept. More matches for them to cover means more mentions of X-factor players means more inane narratives means more disposable income means more flashy restaurants. No wonder some of the finest Test cricket scribes and broadcasters in the country (and the world) are offering blind support. Good on them.

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As for the players and former players, they’re hardly going to rubbish the concept either. Current Test players have a chance to earn much more coin for much less work. Former Test players (on and off the field) can eek out a few more insipid years at a decent hourly rate. If your name was Scott Styris, you’d do the same.

So it’s clear the media and players have vested interests. It’s also clear that people who have never had an interest in cricket are drawn in and are right there, belting out Khe Sanh between balls or getting a free Doug the Rug t-shirt with every $12 Cornetto.

If you tell enough people enough times that it’s a great sport and any dissenting voices are drowned out, people will lap it up. And if they’re told again by some unknown AFL messiah masquerading as a cricket connoisseur how ‘amazing’ it was, momentum will only build. That much is clear.

What is less clear is why others with no skin in the game and with an apparent knowledge and appreciation of the longer format continue to watch and enjoy T20.

These people are everywhere: in pubs, on buses, at Tuesday night salsa, and clogging up every thinking man’s twitter feed.

Maybe they see T20 as entertainment and as very different to Test cricket.

So different that Siddle’s 3-0-56-1 for the Brisbane Bushpigs counts as match fitness or Usman’s quickfire ton against the Hobart Hasbeens proves his borked hammy is good to go.

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So different that they have the same bats, the same balls, the same protective equipment, the same players, the same umpires, the same laws (mostly), the same cricket grounds, the same fielding positions, the same cover drives. Got it.

Here’s an idea: If you genuinely like Test cricket and you want to be entertained in the evenings, try watching the Tests live from South Africa.

If there is one bandwagon not worth jumping on, T20 has to be it. It’s enough to make you flick on the basketball.

Almost.

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