When Stuart Robertson wrote the recipe for T20 Cricket he knew exactly what he was doing. He had precedence as a guide, and it was called baseball.
Robertson knew that Kerry Packer and the promotional captains of cricket from his then Nine Network knew the sport of baseball back to front. Bill Lawry, Alan Connolly, Norm O’Neill and Neil Harvey all played, as did many others.
Ian Chappell was a career defensive baseball catcher for South Australian and Australian teams of the 1960s, possessing a tough mindset and a bat which had holes in it.
Yep, Ian Chappell – the man who said baseball was just hitting full tosses – couldn’t hit them when they threw curve balls.
He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. His career batting average in cricket was miles better than baseball.
But back to Robertson, who saw all that was good about 50-, 55- and 40-over cricket and refined it so working men could play after work.
T20 was born, and the new form has been on a rapidly upward trend ever since.
Cricket unashamedly stole from baseball for 50 years. The fielding, the cross bat shots, the circus catches on the ropes, recruiting Baseball Coaches to teach kids and professionals alike, coloured uniforms, baseball style caps, buggies bringing drinks on the park, franchise names, you name it. Baseball has been fleeced dry.
We have designated hitters in cricket. We have relief pitchers in cricket. We have small boundaries to increase the numbers of ‘home runs’ in cricket.
In fact, there is not much about T20 and 50-over cricket, and even much of Test cricket, which can’t trace its origins back to 20th Century baseball.
The first baseball game under lights in the Major Leagues occurred in the mid 1930s. Cricket finally followed suit in the ’50s.
Baseball, to its credit, has accepted the ‘theft’ of its intellectual property with a gentleman’s handshake.
The New York Yankees, the LA Dodgers, the Detroit Tigers, Atlanta Braves and dozens more have entertained cricket fanatics and taught them amazing skills to bring back to cricket without even blinking.
Thousands of cricketing officials and coaches have gone to the USA, Japan or elsewhere and pilfered ideas to take back to cricket. It’s been going on for years.
Baseball has a big hold in Asia, the Americas, some parts of Europe and is played widely around the world in many forms.
Tradition dies as hard in baseball as it has done in cricket, but necessity is the mother of invention. Hence T20.
And last weekend was a stark reminder of how far cricket has come.
A crowd of 2,000 watched an Australian Baseball Championship game at Barbagallo Field in Perth. For the record, the Perth Heat beat the Canberra Cavalry 4-3 in 14 innings to win game one of a best-of-three ABL Series.
Over at the WACA, 20,000 people watched the final of the T20 Big Bash League. The tickets for the T20 final sold in 20 minutes.
If they had played at Subiaco Oval they would have filled it. If they get a new 60,000 seat arena in Perth, they will.
T20 is part of the fabric of sport in Australia across the world now. It is an unstoppable phenomenon.
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