It seems hard to write about something which is neither tennis or a Tour de France. *sigh*But I suppose I must.
Another twenty20 match reached “frankly stupid” status last night. Rain and fanny around caused a match at the Oval to be reduced to five overs each.
The match decided who was to go forward into the Twenty20 Cup quarter-finals. Sussex managed to beat Surrey by five whole runs.
Chris Adams, Sussex captain, described the conditions as “diabolical”.The rain fell, the light was atrocious, but the cricket continued. Adams again:
"It was the right decision to go out and play cricket. We have created this game, the public love it and we have to give them something to see."I’m not sure I would have “loved it” if I were in the 10’000 crowd. Seeing 10 bloody overs and a bit of drizzle does not make for an over-exuberance evening. It’s crap. That’s what it is.
I have a lot to say about twenty20. You may have heard it all before. But I think that episodes like this don’t do many favours for the game. Administrative cock-ups, desperately piss-poor and unsatisfactory games are not sustainable in the long term, and do not improve the reputation of cricket. They're just a shambles.
Ah well.
5 comments:
Hi
Looks like Blogger.com has behaved well after all...thanks for the link!
actually, i hav never understood the need for the twenty20 format except that the ICC now get more cows to milk....
The farce makes Twenty20 even better in my book. Why do we need the rubbish all day malarkey of a 50 over game when we can get it all done in less than 3 hours and still get a days work done.
50 overs is contrived cricket anyway, it just has a boring bit in the middle. 20 overs is ultra-contrived cricket without the middle boring bit.
Hullo Ananth,
Not sure what you mean about the ICC - seeing as this is an England-devised format and it seems to be incredibly popular. Just the ICC being nice to the public.
David, we here in Ayalac are used to big words like "contrived". We're not really sure what they mean. What I can say, however, is that I think the "boring middle bits" of ODIs are the best bits. It allows you to got to the bar. twenty20 gives bugger all time for boozing, or anything else, for that matter.
Which is a serious weakness in any form of cricket.
Why even play 20 overs? Why not 5?
In fact, wouldn't the essence of the game be best reduced to one ball bowled per side? The elemental conflict -- batsman and bowler. One ball. One chance at glory. Vodafone presents the ICC 1!1 World Cup, live from Las Vegas.
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