(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)The bonsai version of the game seems to be riding a wave the world over. So what would happen if it were to strike Indian shores? L Suresh finds himself without a paddle.
Now that Mike ‘Chew Ear’ Tyson has announced his retirement, the ICC would do well to hire his services to make cricket ‘more interesting’ (read shorter). It’s a different matter that they might be hesitant to lend him an eager ear for his words of wisdom, but the man did know how to bring things to a quick close. A 91-second mauling of Michael Spinks, a 93-second pounding of Carl "The Truth" Williams and an 89-second bout with Peter McNeeley – could that be where cricket is heading?
For those who think it’s not possible, picture this: a Twenty20 match between the Gloucestershire Gladiators and Northamptonshire Steelbacks in their domestic Twenty20 Cup was almost washed out by heavy rains. So what happened next? A five-overs-a-side match. Northamptonshire made 42 for 5, a score that was easily chased by Gloucestershire. (You’d have thought ‘gully cricket’ lasted longer.)
At the international level, Pakistan got a taste of the 20-over jamboree when they faced an ‘inexperienced’ Australian team during their recent disastrous tour down under and took out one positive at the end of the match – in Twenty20, the agony doesn’t last long. Meanwhile, Shoaib Malik, upset with the fact that the ICC was upset with his bowling arm, decided to take matters into his own hands. Instead of chucking the cherry, he threw a match – a domestic Twenty20 fixture. Elsewhere, the Kiwis went into their first match against the Aussies, believing that whacky hairdos would do the trick. Barring Shane Warne who rushed in for laser surgery, none of the other Aussies were impressed.
Cut to India, a nation with all the time in the world. Our movies run for three hours (if not more), our arguments on who’s the better batsman – Sachin or Dravid – last longer and our obsession with cricket lasts a lifetime. So why hurry things up?
Hell, we’ve played the Fifty20!
The closest we’ve come to playing the twenty-over game has been in one-dayers where the other team played 50 overs and we responded in 20 overs - like in the Sharjah finals against Sri Lanka in 2000. There have also been one-dayers that we played in the true spirit of Twenty20, like our preliminary match against Australia in the World Cup 2003, when we didn’t last our quota of overs and the other team didn’t have to – 20-odd overs were enough for them to blast us out of the game.
Anyways, can you imagine a form of cricket where Mumbai is a novice, but Saurashtra happens to be a two-year veteran? Or a version of the game where Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly are yet to play a match, but Dinesh Mongia is the ‘seasoned campaigner’, having played four matches with a strike rate of 131.76? Now you know why Twenty20 will struggle on Indian soil.
Moreover, in Twenty20, a batsman getting out early is not the only problem. A batsman not getting out in time is also an equally big issue - Sunil Gavaskar in the 70s, Ravi Shastri in the 80s and Manoj Prabhakar in the 90s showed us how it’s possible to bat your way out of a match. (Of course, the problem these days could be with bats getting heavier - everyone wants to drop sheet anchor!)
So it might not be a bad move for us to ignore the shortened version of the game that was introduced as an innovation to make cricket more entertaining. And to this objective, we have already made an invaluable contribution – we brought in the bimbettes and their noodle straps.
Now that Mike ‘Chew Ear’ Tyson has announced his retirement, the ICC would do well to hire his services to make cricket ‘more interesting’ (read shorter). It’s a different matter that they might be hesitant to lend him an eager ear for his words of wisdom, but the man did know how to bring things to a quick close. A 91-second mauling of Michael Spinks, a 93-second pounding of Carl "The Truth" Williams and an 89-second bout with Peter McNeeley – could that be where cricket is heading?
For those who think it’s not possible, picture this: a Twenty20 match between the Gloucestershire Gladiators and Northamptonshire Steelbacks in their domestic Twenty20 Cup was almost washed out by heavy rains. So what happened next? A five-overs-a-side match. Northamptonshire made 42 for 5, a score that was easily chased by Gloucestershire. (You’d have thought ‘gully cricket’ lasted longer.)
At the international level, Pakistan got a taste of the 20-over jamboree when they faced an ‘inexperienced’ Australian team during their recent disastrous tour down under and took out one positive at the end of the match – in Twenty20, the agony doesn’t last long. Meanwhile, Shoaib Malik, upset with the fact that the ICC was upset with his bowling arm, decided to take matters into his own hands. Instead of chucking the cherry, he threw a match – a domestic Twenty20 fixture. Elsewhere, the Kiwis went into their first match against the Aussies, believing that whacky hairdos would do the trick. Barring Shane Warne who rushed in for laser surgery, none of the other Aussies were impressed.
Cut to India, a nation with all the time in the world. Our movies run for three hours (if not more), our arguments on who’s the better batsman – Sachin or Dravid – last longer and our obsession with cricket lasts a lifetime. So why hurry things up?
Hell, we’ve played the Fifty20!
The closest we’ve come to playing the twenty-over game has been in one-dayers where the other team played 50 overs and we responded in 20 overs - like in the Sharjah finals against Sri Lanka in 2000. There have also been one-dayers that we played in the true spirit of Twenty20, like our preliminary match against Australia in the World Cup 2003, when we didn’t last our quota of overs and the other team didn’t have to – 20-odd overs were enough for them to blast us out of the game.
Anyways, can you imagine a form of cricket where Mumbai is a novice, but Saurashtra happens to be a two-year veteran? Or a version of the game where Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly are yet to play a match, but Dinesh Mongia is the ‘seasoned campaigner’, having played four matches with a strike rate of 131.76? Now you know why Twenty20 will struggle on Indian soil.
Moreover, in Twenty20, a batsman getting out early is not the only problem. A batsman not getting out in time is also an equally big issue - Sunil Gavaskar in the 70s, Ravi Shastri in the 80s and Manoj Prabhakar in the 90s showed us how it’s possible to bat your way out of a match. (Of course, the problem these days could be with bats getting heavier - everyone wants to drop sheet anchor!)
So it might not be a bad move for us to ignore the shortened version of the game that was introduced as an innovation to make cricket more entertaining. And to this objective, we have already made an invaluable contribution – we brought in the bimbettes and their noodle straps.
(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 26 June, 2005)
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