I wouldn't call Twenty20 Bastardising the game!! Just making it more accessible to people!!

As for attitudes like yours, then fine take the view, but you will watch the game you love to so much slowly dying as less and less people watch it. We need to attract new fans to the game, and if Twenty20 does that, what is the harm? Just don't watch it yourself.

If you really want we should play with two stumps, a bat shaped like a crook, and gambling is the chief reason the game is played...

Let's go back to Jenko's point, when you play, do you play over 5 days? Or do you play a 50 over variant? When someone is playing beach cricket, do you berate them for ruining the game you love. Cricket is fun, it is also entertainment, get over your sad hang-up please!!

The fact is that the game has always changed, always adapted... Twenty20 is just another step in that process. Your attitude is hugely arrogant. It's like King Canute desperately trying to hold back the tide, or the Luddites smashing machinery in the hope that progress would cease, it is futile.

But why bastardise the game to cater for the instant-gratification, fast food-scoffing masses. You say it is natural progression, i say it is an unnatural digression. Big difference. Cricket has, and always has been about the traditional game. I would rather see the traditional game die a natural death, if that is the way it ends up going, rather than be artificially destroyed by 20:20 cricket.

Think about it for a second. The cricketing calender is already too full. If 20:20 gains in prominance, then something has to give does'nt it. And when the powers that be decide on what has to give, the trend indicates that money and profits will decide the issue. Test cricket is the less profitable, thus the amount of tests played will decreace.

But i hear so many say "the game needs money" Why does the game need money? It did'nt need money back in the 30's and 40's when Bradman, Jardine and co had taken the game to it's height. It did'nt need money for one hundred years for that matter, then why does it need it now?

To pay for the growing beaurocracy and increasingly larger executive pay packets? To pay players millions rather than thousands? Or to spend on grassroots development?

I suspect if a close look at where all that money was going, you would find the majority going to the two former points rather than the latter. To me, the trend towards Americanisation of the game has more to do with enriching certain people, that maintain the health and traditions of the game.

I disagree. It is a higher degree of professionalism (started by he Aussie teams of the 90's) that has effected a highr standard of fielding. The Aussies ,and for that matter all teams, field at the same standard regardless of if it is a test match or a ODI

I disagree again. The fact is that the increasing amount of ODI cricket over the last 20 years has basically produced a bunch of pie-chuckers, by running down the skill of bowling. I don't think you will find many people here or elsewhere stating that the quality of bowling stocks is stronger now, compared to 20 years ago.
Also, the wickets are flatter, the bats are bigger and the boundaries are smaller. This has all made cricket more "exciting" with all those whisbang 6's and4's being hit now. But test cricket is poorer for it.
To be honest FF, there are very few bowlers around that are good at changing it up. Even if this was the case, what happened to the art of swing bowling? Or quality attacking off/legspin? Or quality pace bowling. You still get the odd good one coming through now and then, sure, but certainly not the quantity that was around 20 years ago. If 20:20 becomes more prevelant, how many spin bowlers will be flighting the ball. How many bowlers will be willing to risk a pasting bowling swing. Fast bowling too, is too costly to try bowling in 20:20. The trend will increacingly be towards line and length, containment.

I don't consider watching a bunch of batsmen batting on flat wickets flaying a bunch of line and length pie chuckers to short boundaries progress FF.

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I personally despise elitism, and this comments smacks of it... let's keep the game to our little group, and if we don't play my way, then I am going home, and taking the ball with me.

The game of Cricket is for me the best, most complete and most flexible game on Earth, it is vastly better than the "world" game of football, and I love it when new people uncover and fall in love with the game.

But the game is difficult for most people to understand, and as it is played over a working day, difficult for most people (who work)to get to for five days.

Why not make the game easier for the average person on the understand and enjoy? Then when they understand the basic game, they can begin to appreciate the finer nuances of the longer form of the game?

You don't start a small child off with a quadratic equation, but simple adding up. I just feel that Twenty20 is a form of introduction to the game for the young and for the unaccustomed.


Fine don't watch it then, but unless the game gets more fans into grounds it will die.

Why does the game need money, simple to attract the best Athletes to the game you need to pay them. To get the money you need people in the grounds and on TV. The more people you attract, the more people play the game, the more money is to pay them, coach them and develop them, the better player you get.

Test Cricket is not a financial winner (except in England), so unless you find streams of income - like Twenty20 and ODI's - that supply the money so that you and I can watch Test cricket, then Test cricket will decline. The standard of player will decline, and the Test standard will decline - do you really want that?

Most sensible judges will say that improved run rates, fielding etc can be at partly attributed to ODI's, if you want to blindly dismiss any effect, than that is up to you.

May I again refer you to the majority of my posts-

1. I prefer Tests- Twenty20 is not changing the fundamental nature of Test cricket, and while you have a format like Twenty20, attracting the fringe fans, then it means that Test cricket can remain what it is - the best and most complete form of the game.
2. I am not a fan of a Twenty20 World Cup, and would prefer that it either a. remained a domestic format b. Was played by specialists and not be the normal Test players

Come on Flan, a bit patronizing with the whole quadratic equation equation comment. I am sure alot of the people who don't appreciate cricket can learn to understand it yet still feel the same way?

I welcome people enjoying cricket and point out to you that in Australia the game enjoys massive support from everybody from homless people to the prime-minister. More than half a million kids play the game on a weekly basis and they come in all shapes sizes and colours... The point is that they are playing cricket for what it is.

Again, I'll point to you that this is an English problem not an Australian problem. So unless you want to argue that Aussies are smarter and more refined than pommies...?

Cricket is undergoing the same problems as everything else in todays world... Nobody has an attention span of more than 10mins. Your fix seems to be to make the game shorter with brighter colours. Mine is to appreciate that cricket is great because it does go for 5 days (among other things), and hope that we're able to communicate that to people.

It's kind of like modern day education. The system is so concered with trying to cater for everybody we end up trying to study teenage fiction in VCE english.

So why is Australian Cricket expanding it's Twenty20 competition?

http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/austr...ry/296242.html

Because it's a money maker and because it's short enough to fit in with the growing pace of australian sociaty. The problem in Australia is'nt that we dont have the fans around, it's that they dont turn up to games because they're too busy (or at least think they are).

But the game is still just a money making spectacle and it does'nt bring any new fans with it.

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It's hard enough to remember my opinions, without remembering my reasons for them!
Nietzsche

Blimey, wish you would read my posts better...


One of my key points was that the average man (or woman) in the street does not have time to watch a first class cricket game, and Twenty20 is way of getting to see a domestic game.

If you read through my posts, I would prefer not to have a World Cup, that Twenty20 should never be taken seriously (one just before an ODI series is enough) and should be there mainly as a domestic game to get people into grounds watching Counties/State teams.

So why do I know at least 7 or 8 people who are going to a Twenty20 game in a few weeks, who would not normally go to a Cricket game?

Quote from Stephen Fleming