Faster, shorter, harder, revolutionary?
Cricket's World Cups have often proved to be revolutionary, producing totally unexpected changes in the game.
So, back in 1979, Sri Lanka beating India in a World Cup match at Old Trafford led to Sri Lanka's admission as a Test nation. Similarly, Zimbabwe's case for Test status received a massive boost when in 1983 they famously beat Australia.
Perhaps the greatest cricket revolution triggered by the World Cup was India winning the tournament in 1983. Until then the Indians were supposed to be wedded to Test cricket. Every pundit was convinced that even if all five days produced tedious cricket, Indians would flock to the grounds. And Indian cricket administrators proudly boasted how one-day cricket was not for them.
But the victory showed that Indian cricket fans wanted tamasha, that lovely Indian word meaning fun, frolic, fiesta rolled into one. One-day cricket provided that in spades, Test cricket did not and it marked the start of the era that is still with us where Indians cannot get enough limited-overs cricket but struggle to fill their grounds for Test matches.
For good measure when they hosted the World Cup in 1987 they also converted the 60-over tournament that England had invented into a 50-over format, making it the norm for the world.
And it was also at that World Cup that Australia's unexpected victory over England relaunched Australian cricket which had sunk to a dreadful low.
The revolution spawned by the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa is too recent to need retelling. Suffice to say the Indians at one stage did not even want to take part. Reluctantly they did, under a tyro captain and no major players. They won and the cricketing world was remade.
Compared to these examples I do not anticipate this summer's Twenty20 World Cup as producing any great revolutionary turmoil. We are living in a cricketing world remade by the Indian Premier League and India's power, something Giles Clarke, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, is well aware of.
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What I do sense is we shall see two World Cups at least in terms of crowds. When countries from the subcontinent play, particularly India and Pakistan, it will be a bit like a football crowd in terms of passion. The other matches may all be sold out but they are unlikely to reproduce that cricketing tamasha that is the subcontinent's speciality.
The challenge for the game in this country is to combine the subcontinent's tamasha with the special fervour English cricket always reserves for the Ashes. If that can be done then, in a summer with no football or Olympic Games distraction, cricket could reclaim some of the enormous ground it has lost to football in recent years.
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>>>>We are living in a cricketing world remade by the Indian Premier League and India's power,
This is going to upset many English license fee payer....
Dutch 103/3 another 57 to get,May be a new begining ...
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Give me tamasha any day of the week and lots of it - great stuff even when you are losing on the playing field! And what a great performance by the Netherlands at cricket's spiritual home. Last ball wins are what brings Twenty20 its great addictive charm, and its ability to give the "minnows" every chance in the world if they play well.
It is a long time since I have enjoyed an English defeat as much as I did last night. Our boys played OK but team selection suggested a little complacency and the Dutch took their chances so well. But England have a good squad and the batting of Bopara and Wright should see us through provided they are backed up by the lower order.
For now however I am surviving on last night's tamasha and very good it is too!
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I enjoy Twenty20, in fact I love it as a spectacle, but I think I'm being realistic when I say cricket in general simply can't compete with football. Gone are the days of football during the winter and cricket during the summer, at least for most Brits. As for Twenty20 on its own terms, I can see it becoming the dominant, most popular form of the game in the quite near future simply because of its immediacy and ability to throw up a higher proportion of 'shock' results such as the Netherlands beating England. Purists are unlikely to agree with that view, but the five-day game is dying a slow death. It can drag on a bit after all. http://www.loserscomesecond.com/2009/06/twenty20-world-cup-just-around-corner.html
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The problem with Twenty20 is similar to debates on 'who is the greatest' in various sports.
In truth we won't know the extent of the impact of Twenty20 for years. Test cricket is too embedded and too established to just fade away and whilst Twenty20 may be attracting new fans it is not exactly leaving football behind. Equally whilst Twenty20 gives 'lesser' nations a bigger chance of casuing an upset like The Netherlands did it seems unlikely in the extreme that any Twenty20 tournament will be WON by a team outside the traditional powers for quite some years.
Just as people in the media are desperate to call someone the best footballer/golfer/tennis player before they're even 25 nowadays, cricket writers and ex-players all seem obsessed in debating the impact of Twenty20. It seems impossible to read an article without it turning into a Twenty20 Vs Traditional Formats comparrison.
If in ten years time Twenty20 is still the craze it is now and it's just as popular then perhaps the time for debate will have come. But cricket is an old game and it evolves at a much slower pace than most sports. Plenty of fads have come along in the past only to be exposed after a few years as just that, fads.
Will Twenty20 take over World cricket as the pre-emminent format of the game? It doesn't seem utterly unthinkable, especially if it allows the game's appeal to expland. But somehow I think this Twenty20 tournament will become a fading memory for England fans if this summer's Ashes provides a good spectacle.
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Does Mhir ver)Bhose actualy know anything about sport?
The IPL is pointless and Indian cricket is bankrupt both morally and fiscally.
20/20 is the equivelant of staging a World cup witout the matches,just the penalty shootouts. DULL DULL DULL.
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Peter 1970:
Are you seriously suggesting Mihir doesn't know about sport? He had doubts about Allen Stanford waaaay before anyone else. His ringside interviews with boxers are the stuff of legend. He uncovers the stories behind the headlines. It says so, right next to his name, there.
Your comment suggests you think you can cut and paste press releases better than Mihir. As if.
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I thought the BBC was meant to be unbiased and yet this unashamed and incorrect promotion of the influence of Indian cricket perpetuates.
Mr Bose would manage to get a reference to Indian cricket into an article about bumble bees.
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6#
You'll find that all of Mihr's blogs are available to read back through. I mention this because I think you'll find that Mihr quite specifically espoused the wonders of Mr Stanford and how his money was livening up the sport. Any misgivings Mr Bose expressed you will see by the date they were published comfortably POST-dated extensive media reports that all was not well with his organisation.
The same occurred with the story of Liverpool FC's board being in financial difficulty. Mihr announced 'exclusive insights' into a story that was being widely reported in the press. It was on a par with a tabloid claiming as an exclusive today that Kaka is about to sign for Madrid.
I don't want this to sound like a general tirade against Mihr (I know the moderators tend to be rather touchy about things getting personal) but one compliment that would certainly be unwarrented would be that he has 'his finger on the pulse'. I can't comment on his boxing journalism as I've not seen it, I take your word for it that it's top class. However his exclusives are almost universally known before he announces them and he was about as prophetic about Alan Stanford as Alan Stanford was revealing about his accountancy methods.
Everything I've said here can be easily researched and backed up by reading his backdated blogs.
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To be fair 7, this is an article about Twenty20 cricket, it would be rather hard not to mention India.
Try writing an article about the game of Golf in general without mentioning America or Americans.
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Joe Green:
Sarcasm - noun; mocking or ironic language intended to convey scorn or insult
Now read my piece again...
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Touche
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Blah blah blah... India's special specialness... blah blah blah... powerful Indian cricket's powerful power... blah blah blah... the mighty BCCI and it's financial might... blah blah blah.. back handed compliment to english cricket.
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Despite all the remarks by the Great and the Good about the superemcy of Test Cricket, the bottom line is that Professional Sport is exactly that, a Profession. It's all about "demand", "bums on seats" etc. Many sports go through major changes unforseen at the time. Why is Snooker more populer than Billiards, why Lawn Tennis instead of Real Tennis?
But Professional Sports should also remember that they need Publicity. Show Jumping on the BBC made Show Jumping a National Sport for a time. Instead of seeing TV coverage as "free advertising" they where tempted by SKY to see it as a revenue source. We all know what happended then.
The same might be true for Cricket. More and more grounds are empty. Before long they may have to give the tickets away just to get a
good atmosphere for those watching on TV.
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