So, when young kids of the 90’s were growing up watching cricket on television, test cricket was what they saw. That was the format that was played widely among the cricket playing nations. The 5 day long stint between two teams often ended up in a draw but the cricketing fanatics derived immense pleasure out of it. The elegant square cuts that fetched a boundary after 8 overs, drew a huge round of applause from groups watching TV together. However, as by the law of nature, that change is constant, cricket too has gone through a sea of change (if we may say so because even a little change to game we know, is a huge change for some). Now it is the rule of the T20s.
Some may oppose the use of the word ‘rule’ as they might feel that it demeans the tradition of cricket, where men clad in white track pants and tees, spent hours in the field daily for five consecutive days and often ended up getting no result but a draw. While it’s true to a great extent that people who understand cricket and are fascinated by the subtlety of test crickets where even a ball that is allowed to let go to the keeper without offering a shot is considered as a good ‘judgement’ by the batsman, is not something that today’s kids would understand or love to watch.
The Popularity of T20
It might sound very harsh but truth is, for everything to survive, it should be commercially viable. The fact about cricket was with so much of test cricket being played during the 90’s and the beginning of the 21st century, young kids started losing interest in the game. That started taking a toll on the TV viewership rating and turnouts at the cricket stadiums. It wasn’t very difficult for the decision makers to comprehend the fate of the game over the next decade or two. The game with so many people to understand it only been played by a handful of nations, what will be the consequence when the number of such people decrease and the game still follows the same pattern with nothing new to offer! Well, that was pretty much it to introduce a shorter version of the game that would cater to the entertainment that audience seek and help popularize the game among non-cricketing nations.
What the Players Feel
The fever of playing the shorter version has also affected the younger brunch of cricketers. In an interview sir Clive Llyod said “Someone like Andre Russell, I spoke to him only a month ago and said you can get into our Test side because you are one of the best allrounders in the world. A couple of weeks later he told me he has got a bad knee and could only play one-dayers. It’s such a waste that we have a guy who could be a great cricketer who is now not thinking of playing both formats. We have contracts, probably not as exorbitant as others, but they are getting good money. It doesn’t seem playing for our country is paramount where these players are concerned.”
The popularity of T20 has also made youngsters interested in the game. AB De Villers, Virat Kohli, Maxwell, who are such great ambassadors of the game are hugely followed by people and they are real crowd-pullers to games. The recent exhibition match that was held in the US by former players was also a T20 match and it good a good response from there.
Final Thoughts
So, keeping everything in mind, it can be said that to popularize the game of cricket in the world, the authorities should make a tough call and keep T20 cricket in the forefront. The latest cricketing news too reveal that there is a huge turnaround of people in T20 matches as compared to test matches and that is a good news for the game, in commercial terms.