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I love cricket. However every year around the time of the Indian Premier League, I do my best to avoid every cricket website, news story, TV station, and anything else to do with the game. The reason is simple. I hate Twenty20 cricket.
Call me a snob if you will, but I find it difficult to truly appreciate a game that is mostly about hitting a cricket ball farther and more often than your opponent.
The Twenty20 game involves precious little nuance or ebb and flow that can make the Test game so intriguing.
There is hardly any place for defence when batting, or any of the subtleties that are the hallmark of good bowling. It is a poorer game.
And while I accept that its excitement and brevity serve to lure new fans to cricket, I believe the cricket schedule is getting much too crowded for it’s own good.
The IPL seems endless, there is an Australian Big Bash League competition, an English Twenty20 league, and now a Bangladesh Premier League as well. Where will it end?
It is only a matter of time before even more cricketing nations jump on the Twenty20 bandwagon, sparking a bidding war for the best talent available.
Pretty soon, it appears, a substantial number of the major players will be playing 20-over cricket somewhere in the world while their national teams will be forced to field third-string teams.
It has already begun to happen. I have seen the West Indies struggle to take Test wickets in the Caribbean while a supposedly unfit Jerome Taylor was charging in for his IPL team half-way round the world.
Chris Gayle’s destructive bat has not been available to the West Indies since the 2011 World Cup because of a dispute with his board, no doubt fuelled by the fact that he is regularly and lucratively employed elsewhere.
If other cricketing nations are not already experiencing similar problems, they soon will.
I know that the no-objection certificate is supposed to prevent this problem, but we have already seen the strained relations between players and boards that this can produce.
And is it really right to try and force professionals to play for their national teams when they want to be engaged elsewhere?
You can’t blame the players either. An athlete’s career lasts only a few years, and injury or loss of form can make it even more fleeting. A player cannot reasonably be faulted for trying to maximize his earnings while he can. It could all end tomorrow.
And considering he would have dedicated many years to honing his talent for the game, he probably would not have acquired other marketable skills. What happens to him then? Should he not try to secure his future?
I do not know how the danger posed to the traditional game is going to be resolved. The ICC must find a way to seriously streamline the cricket calendar if it is to preserve the viability of the longer forms of the game.
Twenty20 cricket is here to stay, and there needs to be a way for all forms of the game to co-exist.
They better act with haste too, or the great Test game may not be long for this world.
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