Not many sports can boast of having two world cup competitions. Even fewer would have the audacity to hold them both in the same year. But cricket is the exception. We’ve only just recovered from the calamity that was the traditional 50-over Cricket World Cup and now we face the significantly shorter Twenty20 World Cup.



You might be wondering what on earth is going on and if you are, don’t worry, you are not alone. The world of cricket appears to have gone completely mad. If the sport insists on holding two world cups it could at least have the courtesy to spread them out. The rain-ruined final of the shambolic 50-over competition was less than five months ago, so nobody could blame even the most ardent cricket fans for not getting too excited about the inaugural tournament for what is effectively a novelty format of the game.

Exhaustion
Players are starting to complain about burn-out and exhaustion more and more these days and when you look at the congested fixture lists they are faced with it’s hardly surprising. Any member of England’s Test, one-day and Twenty20 teams will have played 39 matches for their country in three different continents since the end of the Ashes series in January. That is a lot of competitive cricket by anyone’s standards and the end of the English international season should have brought with it a well-deserved rest for some very tired players. Instead, it’s off to a fourth continent for another dose of international cricket.





So, the timing of the tournament could be better, but that’s not the only issue there is with the Twenty20 World Cup. For starters, it’s hard to think of reasons (beyond financial ones) why there is any need for an international 20-overs-a-side tournament. Is it really worth getting players from all across the globe to come together to play in matches that are so short you could miss them while you’re queuing up for a beer? It hardly seems so. The Twenty20 format of the game was brought in to drive interest in the county game, which has seen crowd numbers plummet over the years. As a vehicle for taking cricket to the masses it has proved hugely successful, but that’s all it should be treated as – a means of introducing the joys of cricket to a wider audience.

Taken seriously
Cricket, especially international cricket, is all about five-day Test Match games. The craft, graft and skill involved in playing the five-day format is a world away from the gung-ho, do-or-die nature of Twenty20 and it would be a travesty if, for commercial reasons, the shorter version of the game forces the five-day format into the background. The fact that Twenty20 now has a World Cup of its own suggests that it is starting to be taken seriously – perhaps too seriously.





A World Cup for the 50-over version of cricket is perfectly acceptable, but for Twenty20 it is a step too far. Twenty20 should be treated as just a bit of fun and nothing more. A tournament like this gives the format too much credibility. While youngsters might be excited by the big-hitting that Twenty20 encourages, it is not the manner in which they should be encouraged to play the game if cricket is to have a serious future. Patience is a key part of cricket but not of Twenty20. Even in the 50-over format of the game, batsmen have the time to build an innings which gathers momentum as it progresses. It is one of the greatest art forms of the game, but Twenty20 simply doesn’t allow for it.

Slogging
Right from the off, a Twenty20 game is about boundaries. It’s about slogging. It may get bums on seats but to coin an old phrase, ‘it’s just not cricket’. While there’s no problem with counties putting on Twenty20 matches, with the carnival atmosphere that accompanies them, we’re heading into dangerous territory when youngsters are able to watch the likes of Flintoff, Pietersen, Pollock, Chanderpaul, Jayasuriya and Ponting indulging in 20-over slog matches.





Before it became a permanent fixture on the county landscape, there was resistance to Twenty20 from some cricketing circles because of a fear it might trivialise the sport. On a county level it has worked wonders in terms of gate receipts, but the international game isn’t in desperate need of such a boost. Big names attract big audiences in all forms of the game and as they have the ability to pull in the crowds, the well-known players should concentrate on playing serious Test cricket and 50-over one-day cricket, not Twenty20.

Impatient
Whatever happens in this world cup, cricketing crowds will become more impatient. Watching the big-name batsman attack top class bowlers with no real concern for losing their wickets will change what people expect to see when they watch cricket. The Ashes series of 2005 went a long way to raising awareness of cricket and showed how exciting the five-day format can be. A nail-biting end to a Test Match is significantly more exciting than a close Twenty20 game. It means so much more. Players have put in huge amounts of effort and audiences were beginning to appreciate that. This Twenty20 World Cup, in which luck will play a greater part than skill, could go a long way to undoing all the good work of that heady summer of 2005.


Is the Twenty20 World Cup worth it? Have your say?

By Tom Reed, MSN News Editor
September 11, 2007.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not of MSN or Microsoft.

I personally dont agree. I think Twenty20 will just keep growing, keep it as it is!

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