ICC, world cricket’s governing body’s one important mission is to promote the game as a global sport. But if you look back, only one country, Bangladesh has got the Test match status in the last decade. Yes one country more to the sport in ten years time.
So you thought at least the ODI results would be better? No you are wrong. Not even a single country has got the permanent ODI status in the last 15 years. Of the six countries that participated in the 2007 world cup with temporary ODI status, only Kenya and Ireland showed a little promise.
Adding more associate and affiliate member countries is fine, but it is the full membership that matters right? And ICC so far has failed miserably in that. Now with the start of the Twenty20 age will things be any different?
This new format definitely has its advantages over the Test matches and One Day International’s.
Takes less time – You don’t have to wait for 5 days or spend 8 hours glued to the TV to know the result. Now the game ends within 3 hrs. That’s only a movie’s time in the evening. You don’t have to bunk your classes or take leave to watch the match live. So that’ll for sure bring more viewers to the game.
More entertaining – Every over is important here. You won’t see a batsman wasting balls in the name of getting set or building a partnership. Even a run rate of 10 is easily attainable, as South Africa proved that in the first match of the Twenty20 world cup. More sixes, fours and more partying.
Predict N win – Not that easy – Here a team won’t get another innings to correct their mistakes and come back into the game and even win despite being forced to follow on. It’ll not be that easy to come back from a score like 17/5 and then go on to win the match. As the time will be very limited, it’ll be that much difficult to cover up the initial mistakes. So a team winning 21 matches consecutively will be a thing of the past.
Every match will be interesting here, form or class of a player won’t be of much help and there will be fewer one-sided games. So for new teams there’ll be more chance for victory in this format than in an ODI or a Test match.
Will Twenty20 help ICC improve its performance and get more countries into cricket in the next decade?
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