Why Cricket needs the Twenty20 format
July 8th, 2008Why cricket needs Twenty20…
Just the other day I was on the sofa watching Roger Fedex Federer play Rafael Rafa Nadal in the Wimbledon final. It was such an intriguing battle. Every point won had as much a sense of glory as was the feeling of agony in every point lost. When Nadal was handed the winner’s trophy, it spurred an endless array of flashes. I just lay on the sofa imagining a similar scene involving an Indian cricketer. But the truth is that cricket doesn’t have the global viewership, the extensive media coverage and hype that sports like Tennis, Soccer and a few others command. There were similar scenes when Spaniard Iker Cassilas lifted the Euro 2008 trophy a week back. I was watching the game and it was so absorbing that I couldn’t even get up for a minute and go grab a bottle of water from the refrigerator. The game had been such action packed that even at half time I had to wait for a commercial break in the half time show.
The reason for the high intensity in these sports seems to be the shorter duration of the course of play. A day’s play in one day and test cricket spans over seven to eight hours and its impossible for players to have the intensity of soccer and tennis for such a long duration. An ardent fan of cricket like me would still sit and enjoy watching Murali at his fiercest, bowling maidens and a stern Dravid sweating out to see him off and pounce on others. But this is not what will attract new fans and new loyalties. With time people will only find it more and more difficult to go to the venues for a whole day to watch a one day match or a day of test cricket. Television broadcasts might still have good viewership but definitely not for the whole duration of the game.
The best route of entry for new countries and new fans into cricket is probably the Twenty20 format. Once they start liking this format then automatically they will like the other forms like the fifty over and test cricket. Every cricketer understands that test cricket is the toughest test of a cricketer’s abilities but their need to be followers to acknowledge and praise their accomplishments.
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Another interesting fact I came across in a television talk show was that in England, even the test matches have packed houses which was attributed to the higher percentage of middle aged and old aged population who had more leisure time. India on the other hand is a young country and as it moves the demography will change and at some point of time it would in the same phase as the developed countries are in now. Probably that phase will see people having more leisure time and a day out watching cricket would be what they would opt to do. But till then to attract the countries like China, Japan, USA etc to cricket and globalize the sport what cricket needs is probably Twenty20.
Editorial : Dr Mohit Goyal © IPL Cricket Forum
http://goyalmohit.blogspot.com
Posted in Cricket News |