T20 - The Future of Cricket.

I was one of those people who thought that T20 cricket was an abomination. I thought it was a watered down version of cricket that would be soon exposed for the impostor that it was. I will now publicly admit, I was wrong!
I will always love Test Cricket and I don't believe that T20 would ever replace it but I am now a T20 fan. 50 over cricket...Watch out!

David Warner

Thanks to ESPN,I have just watched every match of the Nokia Champions League T20 competition held in India and it was some of the most entertaining cricket I have watched in over 40 years of watching cricket.  T20 is here to stay!

We will all agree that Test cricket and one-day internationals require certain abilities. However, the problems arise when we do not recognize that T20 cricket demand an entirely different skill set and that this fact does not make it an inferior game. It requires a special athlete to consistently execute the reverse sweep, the switch hit or the Dilshan scoop against some of the best bowlers in the world. To be a successful batsman in T20 you must have amazing  hand-eye coordination and be able to make split second judgement calls. And spare a thought for the bowler that has to be consistently accurate and even when he is, has to stand helplessly by as his “good delivery” is retrieved from the third level of the stand behind him.  As Sreenath Aravind will attest, it is no easy thing to be hit for 69 runs off 4 overs.


Over the past few days, from Chennai and Bengaluru, I saw cricket performances that made me proud to be a cricket fan. On 04 October, in Chennai,  David Warner executed a remarkable  display of power-hitting. He struck 135 not out off 69 balls against an attack that had four world class bowlers who were good enough to make their country's World Cup teams. Warner was a picture of class. He played recognized cricket shots and he timed the ball beautifully.  Long ago, we as spectators applauded the batman’s ability to leave alone the good ball as readily as we applauded when he dispatched the bad ball to the boundary. We have all watched Sir Gary Sobers and Sir Vivian Richards destroy bowling attacks by consistently depositing good balls over the boundary rope. In recent times Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard have garnered worldwide acclaim by hitting more sixes in an innings that most players hit in their entire careers. We now see this ability being developed in the T20 version of the game. I ask you , is this bad for cricket?

Arun Karthik





Daniel Harris



On 07 October Royal Challengers Bangalore 215 for 8 (Dilshan 74, Kohli 70, Tait 5-32) beat South Australia Redbacks 214 for 2 (Harris 108*, Ferguson 70) by two wickets.   An exhibition of drives, cuts and pulls that raced to the boundary.  Daniel Harris hit 17 boundaries before his first six,  almost all of them shots of class and elegance.  Then, two outstanding talents, Callum Ferguson and Virat Kohli, timed the ball like Carl Hooper and Brian Lara, ran hard between wickets, and deposited balls over the boundary at will.  And when 214 looked like it would be overhauled, Shaun Tait bowled fast and straight and took 5 wickets. In a game where 429 runs came off 40 overs, Arun Karthik produced the six most important runs of his T20 career off the last ball of the match to propel the Royal Challengers Bangalore to victory.  All this drama came down to the last ball, off which six were needed, and Karthik stepped up to smash Daniel Christian into the stands beyond midwicket. The crowd went up as one, players burst into spontaneous celebration. That was a cricket match!!

I would be amiss if I did not mention the man Chris Gayle. Ever smiling, appearing to enjoy his cricket more than I had ever seen him doing in West Indian colours. Easily the most feared batsman in the world of T20 cricket and he maintained that reputation in this tournament. On 03 October, he scored a whirlwind 86 off 46 balls with four 4s and eight 6s with a strike rate of 186.96 against Somerset. On 05 October, he scored 26 off 15 balls with three 6s with a strike rate of 173.33. In the semi-final on 07 October, in a superb display of power hitting, he scored 92 off 41 balls with eight 4s and eight 6s with a strike rate of 224.39. One of these 6s was the biggest for the tournament being hit completely out of the ground. Chris finished the 2011 tournament as the second highest run scorer with 257 from 6 matches and a whopping twenty-four 6s, the most of any player. And, West Indies coach Otis Gibson was quoted as saying that he would not be missed from the West Indies team! Otis, I, a loyal West Indies fan will miss him!

Chris Gayle

In all honesty I would not pick Chris Gayle in my Test team but how can you seriously tell me that he has nothing to offer West Indies in 50 overs or T20? He is one of the most entertaining players in the game and is worth his weight in gold, from a purely commercial point of view, to any team he plays for.

It is becoming more and more obvious that we in the West Indies need to realise that the different forms of cricket needs different mental and technical preparation. I am sure that the technocrats in the other cricketing nations already realise that more and more cricketers will need to specialise in one version of the game in order to become the best they can be. We cannot continue to train test cricketers and expect them to excel at T20. It is now common place for 400 runs to be scored in 40 overs in a 3 hour period. Do we seriously expect these same players to be satisfied with scoring 250 runs in a day's play off of the same bowlers? The odd player will make the transition but the majority will struggle to the detriment of the team. We saw this with the Trinidad & Tobago team in this tournament. Although they performed creditably it was obvious that they lacked the killer instinct a professional T20 team needs. We in the West Indies need to start developing more top level T20 competitions. We may be surprised at the level of talent we might discover. There is big money in good cricket. Consider this; This year's tournament was aired via ESPN in more than 174 territories worldwide. It was telecasted in a record 18 different international languages across the world. If we start working now there is no reason why in 10 years time,we cannot develop the talent in the West Indies to stage a yearly competition to rival the Champions League or the IPL.

Thought for the Day

In 2008 ESPN, paid almost US$1 billion for the global rights to the Twenty20 Champions League, in a ten year deal.