Silly game, silly shots, great future…….!!!

Vishnu Shankar

Sorry purists. Love it, hate it but you cannot ignore Twenty20 (T20) cricket any more. The Indians did not pay heed to this, the pocket book edition of the game for a while, but Dhoni’s lads have made sure such oversight will not occur again.Indeed, the game that we know as cricket will not be the same again, ever. The first change will be seen in the fitness levels of cricket players across all versions of the game. T20 has made sure laggards will become scant on cricket fields. T20 demands total commitment from players, physical and mental. The pressure in these games is such and the time and overs so short that any thing less than one hundred percent is not good enough. Phew… this is not a game for the weak-hearted. One way to go in the next few years may be to have specialist T20 players who only play this brand of the game. The more versatile and flexible among them could then graduate to the 50 overs and test match cricket. This raises a question. What happens to the technical skills of T20 players? This is essentially a batters’ game. Would their batting skills be found wanting in the longest version of the game? Or putting it another way, would test match players ever make good T20 players? Please consign to the dustbin any earlier notions that T20 was for the daft and uninitiated. This game requires tough discipline, quick wit and minute execution. Having a cool cucumber as your captain is a good idea. Indians must be grateful to the almighty for making Dhoni a calm, intelligent and swashbuckling leader. In the 50 over game you still get an over or two to try out ideas, get your eye in or to loosen your bowling arm. Not in T20. This game changes with every ball. One good or bad over could turn out to be decisive. So, is it a lottery then? Sometimes, but mostly the team, any team, that plays better on the day will claim victory. There are no favourites in this version of cricket. Comforting thought that and pretty democratic too. T20 is not about mindless hitting. It requires intelligent batsmen who must hit hard but according to the merit of the ball. In crunch situations, which are most of the time in this version of the game, even good balls get hit for the maximum. And dot balls are a crime for the batter and little nuggets to savour for the bowler. Not one ball must be wasted. It was said those who devised T20 must have hated the species called bowlers. Umm… not quite! You need cunning, spirited bowlers in the shortest version of the game. It is good to take wickets, but even more important is to be restrictive. Choke the shots and the pressure builds up pretty quickly. Wickets generally follow soon after. And spinners do have a role, a very important one. You see, rocket-fast bowling aids quick run making if you manage to put bat to ball. Remember Brett Lee bowling to Yuvraj Singh in the World T20 semi final at Durban. What is needed is for the bowler to take the pace off the ball so it becomes difficult for the batter to score. Slow and incisive bowlers will be worth their weight in gold in the shortest version of cricket. Harbhajan Singh bowled against the South Africans at the death in India’s last Super Eight game at Durban and how! T20 has redefined fielding. Fast and furious. You need to have the stamina of a horse and the accuracy of a hawk swooping down on prey to succeed here. And having a javelin thrower’s arm would help. Your ground fielding and high catching both need to be top class. All versions of cricket should witness an improvement in fielding now and the game will be richer for it. There will be profound changes in how the game is played, in all versions. No ball on overstepping followed by a free hit should be adopted in all versions of the game. The field restrictions in the inner circle could be devised now in more interesting manners. Could we imagine a restriction on the number of overs per side in a test match? Possible! What is sure to happen is that the 50 over game will now become faster. The total number of runs scored in 50 over games will go up. There will be pressure on test matches to be more result oriented, especially on south Asian pitches. No one will watch a game that sleepwalks into the fifth day with no possibility of a result in sight. Players will be more athletic and hopefully more disciplined. They will be very tired too because there will be no off-season in cricket now. More matches mean more money in the game. So players will get better pay packets for their toil. Cricket will be played, one way or the other, all round the year in various parts of the world. Who knows, it may become part of the summer Olympics one day. Guangzhou Asian Games (2010) have already made a start in that direction. Cricket should now become truly globalised. The format of T20 will ensure that.