When the late New Zealand cricketer, Martin Crowe introduced Cricket Max, a forerunner to the modern-day T20 cricket in 1996, he may not have envisaged how the shortest and most exciting form of the game, would completely revolutionise the sport. Today, T20 cricket has reached the shores of a whopping 105 countries of the world. No mean feat, considering that for the longest time, the game was being played among just eight countries.
Most European nations, which include the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy and Germany have national cricket teams playing the T20 format. Ditto with African nations such as Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, while in the Americas, cricket playing countries include Canada, USA, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and Suriname to name just a few. Similarly, Middle East cricket teams include, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and even Israel. In Asia, too, the game has spread its wings to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, China and Japan. If that is not all, T20 cricket is also being played in all the three Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway and even the farthest Nordic nations of Finland and Iceland!
Today, the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) list of cricketing nations has ten full members, which includes major cricketing nations like Australia, England, India etc, 38 associate member nations, like the Netherlands, Afghanistan, UAE, Ireland etc and 57 affiliate nations which include Austria, China, Russia, Ghana etc. Except for the ten full members who play the long format, test cricket, the rest of the 95 countries all play T20 cricket.
Of course, it is no surprise why so many countries have readily adopted the floodlit-coloured clothing-white ball format. The exciting, three-hour format has been able to immediately compete with the more popular, international team sports like football, basketball, volleyball and rugby in terms of time and retention of spectator interest. T20 has also made cricket extremely, athletic and fast-paced. Today, cricketers playing the T20 format need to be quicker, stronger and more athletic regardless of their role in the team.
If further proof was required about the growing popularity of T20, it was evident at the closely contested games in the ICC World T20 Qualifiers held in 2015 in Ireland and Scotland. In the 51 matches that were played between 14 nations, Stephen Baard of Namibia, scored 309 runs in 8 matches, while bowlers, Bernard Scholtz of Namibia, John Mooney of Ireland and Alasdair Evans of Scotland picked up 14 wickets each. In one of the games, Afghanistan even posted a mammoth, 210 against an experienced Scotland team, with batsman Mohammed Shahzad scoring 75 runs in just 36 balls.
Another reason, why T20 is clearly the future of modern day cricket, is the plethora of professional T20 leagues across the world. Almost each of the top ten cricketing nations of the world has a professional league being played in their respective countries. The Indian Premier League (IPL), which has a lot in common with football’s English Premier League (EPL) has also made a significant contribution to the promotion of the T20 format. The IPL attracts the best international players, who spend 45 days playing the sport in India. Not only do the Indian spectators get to view quality cricket, but lesser known Indian players get to hone their skills playing in the company of the world’s best players.
The format has also proven to be a boon for West Indies cricket. With both their men’s and women’s teams lifting the World T20 titles in Kolkata recently, the sport has got a new lease of life in the Caribbean islands, which is otherwise embroiled in turbulent, player-cricket administration relations.
The T20 has also become the preferred format when it comes to multi-national games. At both the 2010 and 2014 Asian Games, the T20 format was used for both the men and women’s events. However, it is completely unfortunate that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) selfishly refused to send the Indian men’s and women’s teams for both these editions, thereby denying a sporting opportunity for the cricketers and potential medals for the nation. The Commonwealth Games (CWG) authorities are keen to reintroduce cricket at the 2022 Durban games in the T20 format and the International Olympic Council (IOC) is also keen to include cricket in the 2024 Games in France.
If T20 cricket was indeed introduced as a competitive sport at the Olympics, the game would spread even farther and wider. Unfortunately, the ICC is not fully convinced about taking cricket to the world’s largest sporting arena. David Richardson, ICC CEO told a section of the media during the recent T20 World Cup that cricket’s Olympic bid hinged squarely on the support of all the ICC member nations, particularly India (read: BCCI). The BCCI primarily and the ICC to some extent seem to be worried that a T20 Olympics event, could undermine the ICC T20 World Cup, resulting in a possible drop in advertising revenues.
However, both the BCCI and the ICC must curb this short sightedness. They must realise that if they stopped being so possessive about the sport, cricket would eventually bring in more riches to both of them, especially if all the 196 nations started playing the sport, just like football.
One hopes, therefore, that T20 cricket is indeed introduced at both the CWG and Olympic Games soon and BCCI becomes sensible enough to start sending both our Indian men’s and women’s teams for the next Asian Games.
Rahul Chandawarkar is a Colva based journalist and former editor. He is a recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism award for 2009
