What an awful concept

[Prince EWS]

The skills new players will develop won't be any less than those of modern players, they'll just be different.

And once you accept that the skillset is different, it should soon become apparent that we will indeed get people who like fifty over cricket but dislike twenty over cricket. And not because they want to be stuck up, or because they can't handle change, but because the skills and qualities they enjoy are no longer as apparent and have been replaced by skills and qualities that they don't find as enjoyable.

Fuller isn't saying that no-one should like Twenty20 cricket or that it is lesser in terms of skill - but merely that the difference between the skillbase of it and test cricket (and yes indeed even fifty over cricket) make the game much less enjoyable for him.

 

[Athlai]

And once you accept that the skillset is different, it should soon become apparent that we will indeed get people who like fifty over cricket but dislike twenty over cricket. And not because they want to be stuck up, or because they can't handle change, but because the skills and qualities they enjoy are no longer as apparent and have been replaced by skills and qualities that they don't find as enjoyable.

Fuller isn't saying that no-one should like Twenty20 cricket or that it is lesser in terms of skill - but merely that the difference between the skillbase of it and test cricket (and yes indeed even fifty over cricket) make the game much less enjoyable for him.

Well I can agree with that.

The fifty over game will always be my favourite, tests and twenty20 rank about equally for me. There is the excitement of the short game and the pleasant battle of the long one between bat and ball. Waiting for someone to snap.

I won't be surprised at all if a lot of young players who succeed initially at T20 become just as good in tests though. If the ICC and national cricket boards don't drop the ball anyway.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Asif has seen success in this form of the game (Ntini on the other hand has not, though his ODI form has also been not so great), what I'm saying is that what would be so bad about new bowlers and batsman becoming highly skilled at the qualities you stated? Your quite right in suggesting that some types of players may not adapt at all, but those that do have used their abilities to excell in this game.

Nothing is bad about players becoming good at improvisation, bowling slower balls, being sharp in the field and between the wickets and so on. All those things are relevant skills to cricket. What is bad, IMO, is having some of the most enjoyable and exciting elements of cricket pushed to the side in favour of big hitting, which is essentially what 20/20 provides in much greater doses than other forms of the game.

The real reason I don't like 20/20 is just that I find it kind of boring, more or less for the reason Jono offered in this thread, but in terms of the impact it's likely to have, I think ODI cricket has a much healthier balance between the different skills of the game. Obviously just limiting the number of overs played has an impact on tactics, but I think 50 overs is a better balance than 20, where you can have aggressive bowling and fielding and players who can play long innings (like a Michael Bevan type) succeed, but the tougher requirements in terms of fielding and the pressures on the scoring rate still exist.

There is a place for limited overs cricket, obviously, but everyone would agree that a game of 2 overs would be stupid, so there has to be a limit. Much more than 50 overs wouldn't be different enough from test cricket to warrant being a different format, but 20 for me places far too much emphasis on big hitting and run rates and suffers in terms of what cricket is truly about, which is the contest between bat and ball, with bowlers trying to take wickets and batsmen trying to make runs.

 

[honestbharani]

Nothing is bad about players becoming good at improvisation, bowling slower balls, being sharp in the field and between the wickets and so on. All those things are relevant skills to cricket. What is bad, IMO, is having some of the most enjoyable and exciting elements of cricket pushed to the side in favour of big hitting, which is essentially what 20/20 provides in much greater doses than other forms of the game.

The real reason I don't like 20/20 is just that I find it kind of boring, more or less for the reason Jono offered in this thread, but in terms of the impact it's likely to have, I think ODI cricket has a much healthier balance between the different skills of the game. Obviously just limiting the number of overs played has an impact on tactics, but I think 50 overs is a better balance than 20, where you can have aggressive bowling and fielding and players who can play long innings (like a Michael Bevan type) succeed, but the tougher requirements in terms of fielding and the pressures on the scoring rate still exist.

There is a place for limited overs cricket, obviously, but everyone would agree that a game of 2 overs would be stupid, so there has to be a limit. Much more than 50 overs wouldn't be different enough from test cricket to warrant being a different format, but 20 for me places far too much emphasis on big hitting and run rates and suffers in terms of what cricket is truly about, which is the contest between bat and ball, with bowlers trying to take wickets and batsmen trying to make runs.

yeah, in a nutshell, 20 overs is way too few when you have 10 wickets in hand...

On the other hand, as something which is played in limited quantity in the international tours, it has great potential. If you think about it, a 3 match Twenty20 series will not take more than 3 days to play if the venues are reasonably close enough... And it could act as the ideal bridge between a test and an ODI series.


And reg. the skills, I don't think players will LOSE their skills by playing Twenty20. The Ntinis and Asifs will still be good in test cricket and ODIs as they were before. The only problem you and SJS seem to be mainly concerned about is how the next generation of players will give more importance to the skills required for Twenty20 than for the skills required for Test cricket. I don't think it is true... Because we are still seeing that for every Sehwag, there is an Aakash Chopra around. ODI cricket didn't change Test cricket too much... Maybe the patience of batsmen (AND bowlers, I guess) has gone down a little bit but really that is as much a product of the times we live in as it is of ODI cricket...

 

[Scaly piscine]

Nothing is bad about players becoming good at improvisation, bowling slower balls, being sharp in the field and between the wickets and so on. All those things are relevant skills to cricket. What is bad, IMO, is having some of the most enjoyable and exciting elements of cricket pushed to the side in favour of big hitting, which is essentially what 20/20 provides in much greater doses than other forms of the game.

The real reason I don't like 20/20 is just that I find it kind of boring, more or less for the reason Jono offered in this thread, but in terms of the impact it's likely to have, I think ODI cricket has a much healthier balance between the different skills of the game. Obviously just limiting the number of overs played has an impact on tactics, but I think 50 overs is a better balance than 20, where you can have aggressive bowling and fielding and players who can play long innings (like a Michael Bevan type) succeed, but the tougher requirements in terms of fielding and the pressures on the scoring rate still exist.

There is a place for limited overs cricket, obviously, but everyone would agree that a game of 2 overs would be stupid, so there has to be a limit. Much more than 50 overs wouldn't be different enough from test cricket to warrant being a different format, but 20 for me places far too much emphasis on big hitting and run rates and suffers in terms of what cricket is truly about, which is the contest between bat and ball, with bowlers trying to take wickets and batsmen trying to make runs.

As I've said before there is a more of a contest and balance between bat and ball in Twenty20 than there is in ODI cricket. See the damage done by good/bad bowling in this tournament. In terms of bowling figures and impact on the game there is rarely much difference between a good performance and an average one in ODIs. There's rarely much in it for bowlers in ODIs, the best they can do is limit the 4 balls and hope they get away with 4 a over, while any competent part-timer can bowl in the middle overs and go for 4-5 an over. That homogenizing process of bowler performances is what makes ODI so much of a batsman's game.

 

[Mister Wright]

I used to think 20/20 was boring, but I've been really engaged by the tournament and I think there has been a higher percentage of games that are competitive so far in this tournament than 50 over cricket provides at the moment.

 

[Nishant]

I used to think 20/20 was boring, but I've been really engaged by the tournament and I think there has been a higher percentage of games that are competitive so far in this tournament than 50 over cricket provides at the moment.

quite true...it has been a great tournament!!!

 

[bond21]

Test matches are the pinnacle of cricket, no doubt about it. Have a look at this world cup and tell me its for the cricketing purist without lying to yourself. Every boundary, every over, every wicket they play stupid music and dancers get up and dance. What is going on?

The cameras show the crowd almost as much as the cricket.

Talk about cricket being a batsman's game, when that was first said I didnt think they would think it would get like this.

Lets have a look at all the batsman's advantages in T20.

1. Front foot no ball = free hit....what a joke

2. a ball slightly down leg side is a wide....joke

3. Fielding restrictions.....

Then just add all the traditional ones like benefit of the doubt on every decision

Its a sad day when a format is invented when bowling is nothing more than bowling yorkers hoping not to get smashed. Why watch that when u could watch brett lee or shoaib akhtar steaming in with 5 slips and 2 gullys and bowling for a whole session if they wanted?

Maybe if they got rid of the music and stupid dancers it would feel less like a mardi gras and more like a game of cricket.

 

[Jono]

As I've said before there is a more of a contest and balance between bat and ball in Twenty20 than there is in ODI cricket. See the damage done by good/bad bowling in this tournament. In terms of bowling figures and impact on the game there is rarely much difference between a good performance and an average one in ODIs. There's rarely much in it for bowlers in ODIs, the best they can do is limit the 4 balls and hope they get away with 4 a over, while any competent part-timer can bowl in the middle overs and go for 4-5 an over. That homogenizing process of bowler performances is what makes ODI so much of a batsman's game.

If there's such a great contest between bat and ball in 20/20 cricket, then why the hell are there no slips after 2 overs?

 

[SJS]

If there's such a great contest between bat and ball in 20/20 cricket, then why the hell are there no slips after 2 overs?

Oh there ARE slips. In fact there is at least one slip fielder and one gully fielder almost throughoutthe twenty overs. Haven't you seen them ?

They just stand a bit further away from the stumps. The snicks carry to the boundary you see

 

[Scaly piscine]

If there's such a great contest between bat and ball in 20/20 cricket, then why the hell are there no slips after 2 overs?

That depends, but slips aren't a prerequisite to having a balance and contest between bat and ball.

 

[TT Boy]

If there's such a great contest between bat and ball in 20/20 cricket, then why the hell are there no slips after 2 overs?

I've seen plenty of sides have a slip fielder not only after the second over but even after the six over point. To put that into some kind of context, how many times do you see a slip employed after the PowerPlays in ODI cricket? Not many a time... And even in recent one day series between India and England, Paul Collingwood was routinely getting rid of his slips after only two or three overs. As Scaly said, slips are not a prerequisite to have a contest between bat and ball, especially on wickets which are slow and low.

 

[howardj]

Twenty20 is too short to get excited about boundaries and sixes - they happen so often that it becomes monotonous, not unique or exciting. And it's also too short to get too excited when a wicket falls - because you know (except for rare occasions) there's not a snowballs chance in hell that a side is going to come close to being bowled out.

It's designed, in the main, to draw people in who have short attention spans and who are not really cricket fans. The idea that these sort of people are then going to go to become lovers of Test cricket (when they probably, prior to the Twenty20 slog fest, have never shown any interest in the game at all) I actually find quite laughable and totally baseless.

 

[howardj]

Having said that, I don't mind if they have Twenty20 at domestic level, or to open an international tour. I just don't want to see games at the expense of ODI or Test cricket - games that actually have substance; games that actually ebb and flow.

 

[howardj]

The real reason I don't like 20/20 is just that I find it kind of boring, more or less for the reason Jono offered in this thread, but in terms of the impact it's likely to have, I think ODI cricket has a much healthier balance between the different skills of the game. Obviously just limiting the number of overs played has an impact on tactics, but I think 50 overs is a better balance than 20, where you can have aggressive bowling and fielding and players who can play long innings (like a Michael Bevan type) succeed, but the tougher requirements in terms of fielding and the pressures on the scoring rate still exist.

There is a place for limited overs cricket, obviously, but everyone would agree that a game of 2 overs would be stupid, so there has to be a limit. Much more than 50 overs wouldn't be different enough from test cricket to warrant being a different format, but 20 for me places far too much emphasis on big hitting and run rates and suffers in terms of what cricket is truly about, which is the contest between bat and ball, with bowlers trying to take wickets and batsmen trying to make runs.

Encapsulates perfectly what I was thinking. If you're going to have limited overs, then think about how many overs you limit the game to, in order to avoid making boundaries monotonous to the point of being meaningless and in order to avoid producing games that have absolutely no ebb and flow; games that have no character.

 

[chaminda_00]

in order to avoid making boundaries monotonous to the point of being meaningless and in order to avoid producing games that have absolutely no ebb and flow; games that have no character.

Could say the exact same thing about ODIs. You don't score 400 runs from grounds with proper boundaries. Any game that has 350 plus runs each innings has little ebb, flow or character.

The thing people seem to forgot is there is next to no contest these days between bat and bowl in ODIs. Alteast in Twenty20 the joke of contest is over in 40 overs and not 100 overs of watching batsmen have batting practise. The only true form of cricket that has a contest between bat and bowl is Test Cricket and even that is limited these days. ODIs and Twenty20 both have screwed contest between bat and bowl. I wish some posters start to wake up to this fact some time soon as they are becoming very boring right now.

 

[Jono]

Could say the exact same thing about ODIs. You don't score 400 runs from grounds with proper boundaries. Any game that has 350 plus runs each innings has little ebb, flow or character.

The thing people seem to forgot is there is next to no contest these days between bat and bowl in ODIs. Alteast in Twenty20 the joke of contest is over in 40 overs and not 100 overs of watching batsmen have batting practise. The only true form of cricket that has a contest between bat and bowl is Test Cricket and even that is limited these days. ODIs and Twenty20 both have screwed contest between bat and bowl. I wish some posters start to wake up to this fact some time soon as they are becoming very boring right now.

Except here's where you're wrong. In a ODI game you can have a team fall to 3/40 off 10 overs, but then settle a bit, have a good partnership, and suddenly they're going at 5.5-6 an over. That's what we call a momentum change.

Alternatively, you can have a team be 0-100, and then lose a couple of wickets in a big chase and totally slow down. Changing the momentum of the game again.

Best example is the India vs. England 6th ODI. England looked gone in their first innings, recovered and posted an excellent total. India then were cruising with Tendulkar and Ganguly, but then stuttered losing wickets at regular intervals. Then Uthappa and Dhoni rescued the innings, and they got home.

I reckon I switched my opinion as to who will win the game around 6-7 times during those 100 overs. You don't see that in 20/20.

 

[SJS]

We may actually get a nine ball fifty with nine consecutive sixes .

We might finally run out of drugs to induce that high

 

[Swervy]

I reckon I switched my opinion as to who will win the game around 6-7 times during those 100 overs. You don't see that in 20/20.

mmm...I am sure I have plenty of times...maybe more so given that even just one over can change a situation dramatically

 

[chaminda_00]

I reckon I switched my opinion as to who will win the game around 6-7 times during those 100 overs. You don't see that in 20/20.

The same thing happens in Twenty20, just the difference as Swervy pointed out all it takes is one over to change a the momentum of a game, rather then 5-10 overs like 50 over cricket.