Fascinating thread.
My personal opinion as it stands is that I’m well and truly in the anti-20/20 brigade, my view being that it is cricket for people who don’t like or aren't into cricket, the latest attempt by the suits to Americanise my beloved game into an in-your-face-instant-gratification-ooh-look-at-all-the-big-home-runs-by-the-batters-woohoo kind of event that takes away the subtleties, intricacies and flat-out character that I love about cricket.
That being said though, I’m also the first to admit that I’m not who 20/20 is aimed at, certainly not in Australia. I’m a traditionalist – Test cricket is and always will be the ultimate form of the game for me, to the point where even the pinnacle of the ODI game, the World Cup, still ranks lower in my priority list than a Test series victory against pretty much anyone bar Zimbabwe or Bangladesh. I’m the kind of person who gets annoyed with someone when they say they’re a HUGE cricket fan, only to qualify it with “Well, not Tests, but I love one dayers!” so I’m hardly likely to be enamoured with 20/20. Cricket Australia has not even attempted to market or promote 20/20 as a serious contest to date, a feeling which has flowed on to the attitudes of the players, who seem to consider it about equally credible with a game of indoor cricket, which has in turn manifested itself in many of the “traditional” fans, the opinions of which can be seen simply by reading posts on here.
However, where 20/20 does find a market is twofold – 1) people who don’t understand, or more likely don’t care about traditional cricket and really do just want to see a fast paced game with lots of action and incident and big hitting, and 2) those who don’t really have the time or opportunity to follow the longer forms of the game. For example, I knew people back home who would finish work, pick the kids up from home or school and just head down to the SCG/Gabba/whatever to watch the 20/20 game that night. They’d be there for a few hours, have a night of international or interstate sport entertainment as a family, and then be home at a reasonable hour having been thoroughly entertained. And I can’t begrudge them that.
England has obviously embraced 20/20 far more welcomingly than Australia (and most other countries) has so far, and it remains to be seen whether the rest of the world develops the game to catch up, or is happy to just consider it a “Rugby 7s” style novelty, with its own specialists and carnival-style events that don’t intrude on the more serious cricketing calendar. This is the direction I hope it will take, and where I feel the game belongs, but sadly until I get off my a*se and get myself elected to the Presidency of the ICC my opinions will continue to hold less weight in these matters than I’d like.