Twenty million reasons to watch cricket

Jul 28, 2008 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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Hindsight is always 20/20, except in cricket, where it presents a new vision of an ancient spectacle described by Robin Williams, the comedian, as “Baseball on Valium.”  Matthew Engel, in an article entitled “Cricket for Dummies” in the Smithsonian Magazine (October 2006) said, “My special delight was to take along our English visitors –all baseball virgins, all keen on cricket — and explain the American game by analogy with the English one. I never had a failure.

They all grasped baseball, and they all relished it.  Notoriously, this process does not work in reverse. Thousands of Americans have gone to Lord’s, cricket’s London headquarters, and retreated in bewilderment. The most eloquent was Groucho Marx, who reputedly watched for an hour, and said: ‘This is great. When does it start?’”
In those days, international cricket matches were played over five days.  They were called “Test” matches and, according to some critics, were aptly named since they were a test of patience, stamina and buttocks.  Spectators were expected to stay in their seats while the game was in progress, and to refrain from over-exuberance, limiting their enthusiasm to muted handclaps. 
The advent of the West Indies and its emergence as the dominant cricket force in the world changed Test Cricket forever.  On and off the field, West Indies players and spectators injected panache and passion, pride and, of course, prejudice.  There was calypso cricket on the field, and calypso music and merriment among the spectators.  It was our chance to shine, our day for domination. 
Then a new format was introduced — one day or limited overs cricket.  At the international level, it started with a maximum of 60 overs per team or side.  What is an over?  In this case it’s not a case of it’s not over until it’s over. It is six balls.  Am I referring to six separate spheroids?  No, the same ball bowled by the same bowler six times consecutively. 
Then the umpire, and not a musical outpouring from a horizontally challenged member of the female gender, denotes the end of the over, and you start the next over at the other end — of the pitch, that is, and not the person. 
What is the pitch?  It’s actually made of dirt, and not asphalt, sometimes with grass on it- but not grass grass, just lawn grass, called turf.  Limited overs cricket is more popular than “test” cricket.  When the first One Day International (ODI) was played in Trinidad, the entire staff of Holiday Inn “sicked” out and were all at the cricket match.
After a while ODIs were reduced by 10 overs or 60 balls per team, and became 50 overs.  Now there is talk of 40 overs.  In the meantime, 20/20 came on the scene.  Simon Hughes, writing in the Daily Telegraph on July 1, 2004, wrote: “William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the Forties, once said: ‘cricket is organised loafing.’ He might have revised his opinion if he’d been alive to see the Twenty20 version of the game.
Three hours of jumping, jabbing, jerking and jiving. It is more like organised exhibitionism, very much a sport for our style-over-substance times. The good thing is that these exhibitionists have actually got some talent, too. 
The arrival of the Twenty20 competition last summer was, like the John Player League 35 years before, a pocket saviour of the county game. It is a Swiss army knife for cricket, fitting neatly into a small space, and yet with an array of tools to satisfy most essential requirements.”
Two years later 20/20 hit the Caribbean in a big, big way, not by way of England, but it came roaring down the Texas panhandle, through the Gulf of Mexico and smack bang into Antigua. 

Sir Allen Stanford, the Texas billionaire who created the first inter-island twenty/20 event, does not like conventional cricket. 
On the subject of Test Cricket, he drawled: “I find it boring … but I’m not a purist.”  Not a person to beat around the bush, or even hide his light under a bushel, he was once ambushed by President Bush in 2005 and asked to explain cricket. 
According to Sir Allen (quoted on cricinfo.com), “I was invited to Bush’s ranch, and when I said I had a home in Antigua, he asked me to explain cricket to him because it looks a bit like polo and baseball combined … only without the horses. We discussed it for half an hour.” 
Now cricket seems to consume Sir Allen almost to the point of an obsession.  However, in his case, it is not hindsight that is 20/20, but foresight.  He was among the first entrepreneurs to identify and seek to capitalise on the popularity of 20/20. 
“It’s so dadgum entertaining, it will be different from anything you’ve ever seen,” he said enthusiastically.  “Twenty20 has the potential to be the most popular team sport in the whole world in maybe less than 10 years.”
Simon Hughes, as far back as 2004, and long before Stanford, ICL and IPL, had picked up on the appeal of 20/20, “A Twenty20 match was not just another limited over contest between two county teams. It was an event. Players, spectators, even some broadcasters, were not just there out of duty, but because they wanted to be. The players actually enjoyed it – well, apart from the bowler whose four overs went for 58. It restored a sense of fun to the game.”
The IPL brought to India all the stars of world cricket and created an event that has changed the nature of cricket.  Two days ago, almost two months after the IPL ended, Shane Warne said: “In almost 20 years of playing the game at the highest level, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced the intensity and passion from a crowd like we had in the IPL, except for maybe the Ashes.”
Just over three months from now, there is going to be the mother of all twenty/twenty games — Sir Allen Stanford’s 20/20 for 20 between a Stanford Super Stars Team and England.  One twenty/20 cricket match, or 40 overs, or 240 balls in all, and the eleven members of the winning team will each get US$1million. 
I am a purist; I still love test cricket and consider it the true criterion and crucible of cricketing excellence.  But you can’t beat 20/20 for excitement, for fun and for time.  It is not baseball on Valium, but baseball on speed.  The 20/20 for 20 will be the most watched event in cricket history, and it is taking place in Antigua on the island’s Independence Day.
When the game starts, look for me in the stands with my noisemakers (my two children Jasmine and Zubin), doing some very disorganised loafing. 
*Tony Deyal was last seen echoing South African Shaun Pollock, “It’s a bit of a sprint. If one-day cricket is an 800-metre race, then Twenty20 is 100 metres”.

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