In another thread I predicted comparisons between T20 and ODI would be made and it hasn't taken long for them to appear.
The first line of Paresh Soni's article reflects his "contempt" for the 50 over format which he says supplies too many boring, one-sided contests. In contrast, he believes T20 will generate more enthusiastic cricket discussions. Mmmm ... we might have to rename this forum.

This author has already resigned to T20 becoming the third international format in the cricket calendar and wonders how much of the current ODI schedule it will replace. He is also greatly worried that young cricketers will devote their time to developing T20 skills at the expense of Test match skills in order to earn an income. This fear is reflected in his closing paragraph:
In this article the author details the skills required to play T20 cricket and predicts that the T20 format will globalize cricket.

The ramifications of T20 cricket will certainly be a trend this board will watch with interest. If you see any other articles making comparisons between the different formats please post links to those articles in this thread. I'll sticky this thread so you can easily find it.

The "silly" and untechnical strokes associated with ODIs, whether they are in the 20 or 50 over format, will affect the batting technique of young and upcoming players in the long term. You will see less and less Dravids in the days to come.

One way out of this problem is for various cricket playing nations to nurture separate teams for the ODIs and the longer form of the game. Players can freely cross between Twenty-20s and 'traditional' 50-over ODIs, but those involved with Test & County cricket should be a separate breed. I know that this is difficult, expensive and probably non-sustainable for some countries, but still worth a try. Otherwise, I can see the beginning of the end for 'proper' cricket.

I've never seen why learning to open the face of the bat with a view to rotating the strike off good balls (whilst still waiting for bad balls) is a bad thing for Test cricketers: once the ball is old and soft, Test cricket needs batsmen who can apply pressure in this way. Sure, Test batsmen still need to be able to leave anything outside off stump, play straight to every ball and look to score exclusively between mid-on and extra-cover when the going gets tough... but that's not asking much.

I'm also happy to see seam bowlers encouraged to learn variations like the yorker and well disguised slower ball: rarely useful in Test cricket as anything more than a once-in-a-spell delivery... but (as Harmison showed with that great delivery on the last ball of the day in one of the Ashes Tests of 2005) wonderful when unexpected!

What's killing Test cricket is NOT the above (surely THE great ODI skills): what's doing the damage is the lack of contest between bat and ball.

1. True bouncing, crack-free, non-deteriorating pitches (and balls with inadequate seams) are allowing hitting through the line without risk: clean striking of good balls is bringing rewards to sides where it should lead to nothing but wickets.

2. Bat technology is minimising the risk associated with over-commitment: players can go hard at good balls in the knowledge that timing and placement don't have to be right.

3. Outfields are shaved to short... and boundaries are brought in too close... rewarding poor shots that are hit hard over good shots worked skillfully into gaps.

All of the above is driving selectors and captains away from attacking finger spinners who like to give the ball some air and invite the batsman to take them on and from the sort of attacking swing/seam bowlers who thrive in sporting contests where they can pitch the ball up and tie batsmen in knots - and with the loss of them, we've lost virtually all regard for specialist glovework.

Test cricket is killing itself: ODI nonsense is not to blame!

Gibbs Fan quoted in another thread that the Twenty-20 game can lead to higher scores in the 50-over ODIs. This is likely to be true and hopefully will get rid of that annoying "middle overs dip" in the latter. We have seen how the scoring rate has improved in Tests in the last 15 years and this, to some extent at least, could be due to players involved in ODIs.

I agree. When selecting a 20/20 team, a list should be compiled of players considered no chance of playing test cricket and chose the team from that list. When i was a kid, our school comp was twenty overs a innings, and my club banned us from playing it.

It is the beginning of the end for us purists. Society (in Australia anyway) is being driven by cheap substance-less consumerism where people are mainly concerned with getting bang for their buck, no matter how empty it makes them feel afterwards.

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I am not so sure. The 50-over ODIs and certainly the Twenty20 games have attracted a lot of varied supporters who really know very little about real cricket (my wife, for example). They only watch the games because of the on field excitement, shotmaking and the general hullabulloo - for that matter, we watch them for the same reason. But when it comes to the real gutsy innings building or stonewalling to save a match in the Dravidian mould, those other temporary cricket fans disappear fast. Genuine cricket "purists", no matter where in the world they are, will still prefer a well planned and fought Test or county cricket match with the pendulum swinging one way and then other. There is something very thrilling about discussing "what's going to happen tomorrow" over an evening beer; how many other sports allow that luxury?

That's all true, Nostromo, but the real issue is that Twenty20 will eventually squeeze something out of the calendar, whatever comments Malcolm Speed is making now to the contrary. For the time being, the ICC's position is that the ODI tournaments (World Cup and Champions' Trophy) are safe and the problem is jamming Twenty20 in to the calendar; that will change on pure financial grounds if the ICC has its head screwed on - and the Champions' Trophy in my view should be the competition to go if anything must. There is a risk, however, and it all comes down to the mighty dollar (or rupee), that the Champions' Trophy will remain, as will the World Cup. That leaves only Test cricket to move aside to make room for the Twenty20 money spinners. And that, for me, is bad news.

I will not knock the Twenty20 concept outright, never once having seen a game. And after all, twenty over matches are probably what most people play, not only at Seamer's school but also in the office matches in the summer after work which might be as high up the rankings as most of us will ever get. Certainly I have never scored a match of more than 20 overs a side. I think Twenty20 has its place - it is pulling in new fans to the game, and that must be good. But if my brother hasn't managed to get his ten and eleven year old nippers along to a 50 over game in the next couple of years, having attracted their attention with the Twenty20 stuff, I shall be disappointed in him! And a couple of years after that (OK - a couple more!), I shall be expecting them to be buying Old Uncle OF's beers for him at the test match. Leave Twenty20 at county level in England and at an equivalent level in other countries: at international level, we really should not be watching anything less than ODI stuff.

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While I was condemning the Twenty20 format before the recently concluded World Cup, I am now willing to accept it and not just because India won the trophy. I am honest enough to admit that I did watch - and enjoy - the thrilling moments but I did ask myself afterwards "was that really cricket?" It is all very well to cheer while Yuvraj was hitting six sixes in an over, but in retrospect, I'd rather be watching Brett Lee & Michael Kasprovich inch towards that final hurdle in Edgbaston in a heroic but ultimately futile attempt to win.

One concern is that some batsmen's technique might be adversely affected by the unorthodox shots involved in both forms of ODIs. Rahul Dravid tries hard to play within himself even in the 50-over game and almost succeeds. But a lot of younger guys like Alistair Cook & Gautam Gambhir are very skilled traditional strokemakers; those are the sort of players - and not the Afridis & Dhonis of this world - that I am concerned about because their technique might suffer in the long run by participation in the ODI format of the game.

I don't mind ODI cricket - even the Twenty-20 format - carving out a niche for itself in world cricket, as long as it is not at the expense of the more traditional form of the game. Unfortunately, things do seem to moving against the latter.

Surely the obvious future of Twenty20 is as an international club competition: it's the perfect format for getting the best sides from each domestic league to play each other... the first cricketing step to what already exists in soccer - clubs being better than national sides.

As three games can be played at one venue in one day... and as there is no meaningful strain on players... a tournament with four venues in use on a daily basis could get through group stages (and down to quarter-finals) very quickly... and the quarters, semis and final could be over in a weekend!

Lots of players could be involved... but the compact timeframe would keep costs down... and the intensity would appeal to broadcasters. It's going to happen sooner or later... and to my mind the sooner the better.

I have some doubts about that compacted format. For ground admissions - and it will be the same for TV when pay-per-view really takes hold, which it inevitably will - you can almost certainly charge more to get people through the turnstiles four times than you can to get them through once to watch four games. To watch TV, no-one will think much about dropping a fiver to watch three hours of cricket on each of four evenings - it's less than the price of the accompanying beer - but if you ask them to spend twenty quid on a Saturday, they'll think twice.

Furthermore, I think you might underestimate the strain on the players: there might not be much from the actual cricket, but the travel strains should not be brushed aside. Distances and times of travel for a world Twenty20 club competition are not comparable to those for the European Champions' League in football; and lastly at club level, many teams would find the costs of travel and lost time in a season a serious burden, I think, with the rewards in terms of gate money and broadcast fees coming nowhere near the levels which attract top flight football clubs to the international club competitions.

I think the future of Twenty20 should be at domestic level; for the foreseeable future, I'm afraid it will be at full international level with the longer forms of the game suffering. I'm afraid the ICC and the national boards are milking a cash cow for short term gain at the moment, with a worrying neglect of what I still consider the higher forms of the game.

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Money won't buy you friends. But it gets you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan