"The Impact of Twenty20"
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come”, said Victor Hugo, French dramatist, novelist, & poet in his 'Histoire d'un crime which was later quoted by present Prime Minister of India Dr Monmohan Singh while presenting his famous budget in 1991 as Finance Minister that ultimately led India to the path of liberalization and globalization.
You are probably thinking that I am in a mood to start a boring academic lecture on the importance of globalization and privatization in my writing. But don’t be scared! I am not in any kind of serious mood either. Rather, I will discuss about the funnier genre of cricket to hit the field so far. Yeah mates, its Twenty20 Cricket that has probably come to stay and will fix the future course of cricket in the coming days.
Despite the initial swagger of orthodox section of cricketing fraternity who thought it would kill the beauty of an otherwise gentlemen’s game, most of the rational people accepted the fact that this has come to stay and opposing it would be of no avail.
But the question is: will Twenty20 cricket blow away the other forms of cricket, i.e. test and one-day cricket??? The answer is a big NO. On the other hand, it will probably give a new dimension to every form of cricket, making them more attractive and attacking, pulling people out of their house to the field.
The fact is that cricket pundits expressed similar kind of apprehensions when one-day cricket with its colorfulness came almost three decades ago. But ultimately their concerns proved terribly wrong and one day cricket not only fetched cricket lovers to the ground again, but also saved the test cricket from getting monotonous, as the batsmen after their foray with the one-day cricket, started playing test cricket like one-dayers. And the result is in front of us. Test cricket, unlike past, has become result oriented and people started coming again to watch test match proceeding.
Likewise, this twenty20 cricket would change both test and one-dayers, as it puts more enthusiasm and glitter to its senior siblings. Besides, people who don’t come to the field for want of time would again be back with twenty20 as it would end in just some two or three hours.
The day has gone when we had plenty of leisurely times in our hands and spending the whole day and watching the slowish batting of Gavaskar or Boycott were very much in tune with the general life of that time. But in this time of modern hurry twenty20 is the only solution, and no matter how much it faces opposition, it has come to stay here for the good of cricket only.
Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:45 pm