ICC Twenty20 World Cup, South Africa (11 - 24th September, 2007)

[puneets]

The seven match per year cap that ICC has placed is ridiculous. I'm sure that BCCI will be the first country to flout it. 20-20 is definitely the way to go. Just try watching Ind-Aus ODIs, they'll be pretty boring

It's just a matter of time before the audience realizes that ODI cricket is a waste of time. For a person watching the match in the stadium, 20-20 is much more exciting than  ODI. This will be the key factor that will ensure that 20-20 scores over ODIs. With so many domestic 20-20 competitions planned, a lot more people will have the opportunity to go and watch the matches in the stadiums. 

[Born a Libran]

It is too early to say whether 20 cricket will replace ODIs IMO.  I totally agree with Sandeep - the conditions in SA were good for bowlers and batsmen and that always makes for entertaining cricket - even the Eng- Ind test series was interesting for the same reason - but at the opposite end of the spectrum. IMO, if ODI cricket is played in good pitches, it will offer an equally entertaining quality of cricket.  I love the close games in basketball but I always feel for the team that loses by a point or two - I feel in that case it should be a tie rather than a loss in most cases.  Even tennis tie breakers can be cruel.  20 overs of cricket would belong to the same brand of  sports IMO.  Savor the close matches but enjoy the longer versions of the game too.

[jayakris]

Sandeep, That is all fair, to say that we need to play more Twenty20 to know etc, but then give me one reason why they should put a crazy limit of seven Twenty20 matches a year.  I guess we have exhausted our quota already for the year already!  Need to wait till next year to know how we would do on other conditions and pitches?

As for the AD revenue time, I already said we should play twice as many Twenty20 matches as ODIs.  Actually you will get MORE revenues from more breaks too.  Heck, add a drinks break for 5 minutes after 10 overs.  Or just simply add TV timeouts, which are done in all basketball, american football etc (people hate it, but TV wants to make money, and I am fine).

Gosh, the way you all make excuses for extreme conservative inertia in these old folks, is troubling ....

Jay

[jayakris]

Savor the close matches but enjoy the longer versions of the game too.

For that we have tests, and I never lost the love for test cricket.  The pointless ODI format is all I am complaining about.  Tests and Twenty20 are the only things needed.  I cannot find ONE thing (and none of you have given me one) that the neither-there-nor-here ODI version gives me that is not in T20 and Tests.  Nothing.  Whatever is there is ODI is done in more exciting ways in tests and Twenty20, with better tests of skills and abilities of players. 

Of course, the teams for these two versions would be different, and it is possible that many players would come through the twenty20 route first befoe showing as they grow older that they have it in them to do the exciting parts of test cricket.  There may be a few players who take the reverse route too, but not sure.  When we see tests, we will miss some of the Twenty20 players, and look forward to T20, and when we play a few T20s, we will miss the test players and what they do.   More excitement all around.

But the number #1 reason for me is probably that we will avoid the tremendous national waste of productivity from ODIs with evening T20s.

(I would also add that all tests could be moved to 3 pm starts, with lights, except for the morning dew details - but it would be interesting to do a 5 pm tea, 7.30 pm "dinner", and play till 11 pm )

Jay

[Atithee]

Savor the close matches but enjoy the longer versions of the game too.

For that we have tests, and I never lost the love for test cricket.  The pointless ODI format is all I am complaining about.  Tests and Twenty20 are the only things needed.  I cannot find ONE thing (and none of you have given me one) that the neither-there-nor-here ODI version gives me that is not in T20 and Tests.  Nothing.  Whatever is there is ODI is done in more exciting ways in tests and Twenty20, with better tests of skills and abilities of players. 

Of course, the teams for these two versions would be different, and it is possible that many players would come through the twenty20 route first befoe showing as they grow older that they have it in them to do the exciting parts of test cricket.  There may be a few players who take the reverse route too, but not sure.  When we see tests, we will miss some of the Twenty20 players, and look forward to T20, and when we play a few T20s, we will miss the test players and what they do.   More excitement all around.

But the number #1 reason for me is probably that we will avoid the tremendous national waste of productivity from ODIs with evening T20s.

(I would also add that all tests could be moved to 3 pm starts, with lights, except for the morning dew details - but it would be interesting to do a 5 pm tea, 7.30 pm "dinner", and play till 11 pm )

Jay

Jay, can you give me a reason for your liking of the tests and perhaps I can divide it by five and give you a reason for liking ODIs 

[Atithee]

Savor the close matches but enjoy the longer versions of the game too.

For that we have tests, and I never lost the love for test cricket.  The pointless ODI format is all I am complaining about.  Tests and Twenty20 are the only things needed.  I cannot find ONE thing (and none of you have given me one) that the neither-there-nor-here ODI version gives me that is not in T20 and Tests.  Nothing.  Whatever is there is ODI is done in more exciting ways in tests and Twenty20, with better tests of skills and abilities of players. 

Of course, the teams for these two versions would be different, and it is possible that many players would come through the twenty20 route first befoe showing as they grow older that they have it in them to do the exciting parts of test cricket.  There may be a few players who take the reverse route too, but not sure.  When we see tests, we will miss some of the Twenty20 players, and look forward to T20, and when we play a few T20s, we will miss the test players and what they do.   More excitement all around.

But the number #1 reason for me is probably that we will avoid the tremendous national waste of productivity from ODIs with evening T20s.

(I would also add that all tests could be moved to 3 pm starts, with lights, except for the morning dew details - but it would be interesting to do a 5 pm tea, 7.30 pm "dinner", and play till 11 pm )

Jay

You can certainly do better than "national waste of productivity."  This should be a thread of its own: "Do ODIs cause a national waste of productivity?"  I am not disputing they take away productive time, but by this measure, so many other things need to be considered in the same vein.  We could start by the number of national and regional holidays and different leave programs.

[Sandeep]

Exactly!! Jay, you can certainly do better than "national waste of productivity"

[PKBasu]

I finally got to watch a replay of the entire Pakistan innings on a decent sized TV screen. India deserved the title, having dominated the final except for those two overs of terrific hitting by Misbah and Sohail Tanveer, but the only matter on which I have changed my opinion is Joginder's bowling BEFORE that excellent match-winning delivery. Before that, he bowled rather poorly in the final and was quite lucky to have the good figures he finished with: he seems to have little confidence in his own bowling, and bowled consistently far outside the off-stump (including the rank bad ball that got Younis Khan caught). I would agree that he shouldn't be a shoo-in for the ODI side just yet, and will still need to prove himself in that form of the game (as bowler and allrounder). Of course, none of this detracts from the fact that he is an authentic national hero for the way he bowled the final key deliveries (the two yorkers to Hussey in the SF, and that final gem of a ball to Misbah that won it all for us in the final). It was great to see Shahrukh Khan (a decent school-level cricketer for St Columba's School in Delhi, where I think he captained the cricket side) come onto the ground to hug every one of the Indian players in turn.

[Sandeep]

Of course, none of this detracts from the fact that he is an authentic national hero for the way he bowled the final key deliveries (the two yorkers to Hussey in the SF, and that final gem of a ball to Misbah that won it all for us in the final).

Come on PKB, it was pretty ordinary ball. Joginder did hardly anything with the ball to get Misbah out! Gem of a ball is way too much of exaggeration. Ofcourse, credit to Jogi for holding his nerves but the ball with with he got out Misbah was no where close to even being called a good ball!

[Prem]

Come on PKB, it was pretty ordinary ball. Joginder did hardly anything with the ball to get Misbah out! Gem of a ball is way too much of exaggeration. Ofcourse, credit to Jogi for holding his nerves but the ball with with he got out Misbah was no where close to even being called a good ball!

Agreed Sandeep.

But that ball has got him & his mates more than half a million dollars each !!!
It got Jogi a Central Contract too........
So maybe it was a gem of a ball....

[PKBasu]

Oh, it was a good ball alright. I have now watched replays of that ball at least 20 times. And there is no doubt in my mind that Joginder won the mental battle by pitching it on a length outside off and making it impossible to do anything with that ball. Misbah had four more balls to get 6 runs, but Joginder ensured he took his wicket.
Of course, he was even more of a hero for bowling those two perfect yorkers to Hussey in the semifinal (and then getting his wicket), but you can't take the credit away from Joginder for winning us the World Cup when it mattered most -- in the crunch. (He may, of course, never do much more for India ever again, but he will always be known as the man who took the wicket that won us the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship; by the way, what an awful-looking trophy it is!! Perhaps Joginder or Yusuf Pathan will be like Kirti Azad -- fortuitously in the team for the magic event, and contributing to the title triumph, but possibly never doing much more for Indian cricket again; Kirti only got the wicket of Botham in a superb spell of 1/28 off 12 overs in the SF, but he is forever remembered as a member of the WC winning team...).

[jayakris]

But that ball has got him & his mates more than half a million dollars each !!!
It got Jogi a Central Contract too........
So maybe it was a gem of a ball....

I completely agree with that.  GEM of a ball.  That is my thinking.

I can hardly see the ball in the grainy Youtube video.   But it is a gem of a ball, even if I have not seen it.  Because it WON the match.  THAT is the point.

To explan further, the reason why I call it a gem of the ball is this.  The guy could have got a brain f*rt seeing Misbah move while he was just starting his arm rotation, and tried something odd, which clearly would NOT have worked and would have proven disastrous - either Misbah would have hit it out of there, or it would have become a wide or something, making it even easier to win it in the next 4 balls (and we would have missed the chance to capitalize on Misbah's ONE moment of a little mistake - he hardly made mistakes otherwise).  It is more and more clear to me now, that Joginder did not BLINK and went through with whatever he was going to bowl - which may have resulted in just an ordinary ball in plain cricket terms, and that may have been all he was really capable of.   But that ball was much much better than a whole host of WRONG things that could have happened, had he not kept his nerves and gone through bowling at least a medicore-to-decent ball that was enough to do the job.   

OK, may be I should say that it was a gem of piece of bowling, if not gem of a ball.   In overall terms, it was a gem.

Jay

[Born a Libran]

This comment from Gilchrist sums up why I would like 50 overs cricket to continue:

"We're here, 50 overs, and that's what we've got to do. In 20 overs, there's so much good fortune that needs to go your way. If you play 10 Twenty20s in a row, you can't put money on who's going to win because it's so variable. But in 50-over cricket, the better side will win more often than not. That's what we're striving to be."

And 50 overs is not the same as test cricket.  During the period when SA was undoubtedly the world # 2 in ODI cricket, their test cricket suffered a lot... All 3 kinds of games requires different skill sets to be displayed over varying intervals of time.  And they should all continue, IMO.

[jayakris]

If you play 2 to 3 times as many Twenty20 matches, the better teams will definitely get beyond the chance aspect.  All the matches would be more interesting too.  No need for ODIs

Jay

[PKBasu]

Ridiculously self-serving remarks by Gilchrist. They aren't particularly good at T20 cricket, because their's is an ageing side that is totally unsuited to the pace of T20 cricket. The Aussies lost to Zimbabwe, Pakistan and India in the T20 championship. To attribute this to chance is ludicrous. They are simply unsuited for the fast pace of T20 cricket, and India's young side was perfectly suited to it. When ODIs began, they were also said to be games of pure chance -- but teams soon figured out how best to play them, strategically. Some new strategies have emerged over time (such as the SL innovation of lofted shots in the first 15 overs at the 1996 World Cup), and ODI cricket today is very different from what it was in the 1970s (when it was really just a slightly faster version of test cricket, with 60 overs per side). India made a terrible mistake in the early phase of ODIs by keeping its best bowlers (Chandra, Pras) out of the side, and the Aussies are making a silly mistake now by packing their side with players aged well over 30 in T20 cricket.