I have a problem with Sir Allen Stanford’s $100 million five-year cash injection into our national summer sport, but it is not one that has been widely shared so far. I don’t like Twenty20 Cricket.
My problem is not that the handful of games I’ve attended have hardly enthralled. Nor is it the fact that we have created another sport at which we are no longer any good – this is not in itself a surprise, although the speed at which we have been left behind is unprecedented.
I can’t see why I will care who wins the five England v Stanford All-Stars matches. The creation of millionaires will simply hasten the match in its descent towards the equivalent of Man Utd v Chelsea – an exercise in trying to decide which team is least dislikeable (Man United, for me, for now). My viewing pleasure will be based on the small possibility that Kevin Pietersen is run out off the final delivery. But even this is not my greatest concern about this form of the game.
The joy of cricket is in watching a tactical ebb and flow of two teams competing, ideally in an on-going series. Personal battles pervade the struggle of bat against ball against talent against time of day against impetus against weather.
Whilst serving as a way of bringing a new audience to cricket, the merit of this new phenomenon was clear. Now that it is leading the way, however, the fear of another sport professionalising to the point of total separation between player and spectator makes me wonder if it’s time to burn some more ashes. The death of English cricket, mark two?
It took a few seasons to realise the main reason for my dislike of this, the shortest version of the game. Cricket is a team sport. Some players bowl, all bat, and every twenty years we find one capable of doing both. Twenty20 is destroying the relevance of the team. One person can win a game. Or rather, one batsman. Sixty balls of swashbuckling heroics and the match is effectively complete. For one player to have such control, it no longer feels like a team game. The balance between bat and ball has been lost. And that’s just not cricket.