What an awful concept

[Perm]

There are momentum swings in Twenty20, just smaller and not quite as dramatic or extended as in ODI's or Tests, which is understandable.

 

[SJS]

There are momentum swings in Twenty20, just smaller and not quite as dramatic or extended as in ODI's or Tests, which is understandable.

Absolutely

Just imagine five consecutive sixes and then miracle of miracles a dot ball !!

As Colin Cowdrey famously said.

The dot ball is the Holy Grail !

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

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.

Couldn't disagree more, really. There is a contest between bat and ball in 50 over cricket. You see attacking fields, attacking bowling, sides being bowled out, sides losing early wickets then recovering to make a good total, and the opposite. While those sorts of things can happen in 20/20, it's on such a different scale that there's simply no significance to it. A team who loses wickets will either change absolutely nothing and the wickets will be irrelevant, or if they lose enough wickets to make a difference the game will be dead as a contest anyway, like in the Australia v Sri Lanka game recently. Wickets are essentially a hiccup in the run rate, they aren't a means to an end for the bowling side, therefore there is no desire from the bowling team to bowl out the batting team and no contest between bat and ball.

And really, it's quite absurd to argue that ODIs have a reduced contest between bat and ball because of the limit in the overs and the focus on rapid scoring, and then suggest that 20/20 is no worse. Naturally, limiting the number of overs brings the focus to batsmen, and the fewer overs you have the more batsman define the game. The shorter the game, the more defensive the fielding side has to become, because the less chance there is of having success with attacking cricket. If you had a game of 9 balls it would be impossible to bowl the batting side out, therefore the entire contest would be which batting side could get closest to 54 runs, and the difference between a dot ball and a wicket would be precisely 0.

I hate the 400 v 400 type ODIs that you mention as well, but they are few and far between and only occur when the bowling is absolutely horrible or the conditions are slanted way too far in the batsman's favour, ie a flat wicket and a tiny boundary. Essentially, every 20/20 game is one of those 400 v 400 ODIs, just shorter.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Couldn't disagree more, really. There is a contest between bat and ball in 50 over cricket. You see attacking fields, attacking bowling, sides being bowled out, sides losing early wickets then recovering to make a good total, and the opposite. While those sorts of things can happen in 20/20, it's on such a different scale that there's simply no significance to it. A team who loses wickets will either change absolutely nothing and the wickets will be irrelevant, or if they lose enough wickets to make a difference the game will be dead as a contest anyway, like in the Australia v Sri Lanka game recently. Wickets are essentially a hiccup in the run rate, they aren't a means to an end for the bowling side, therefore there is no desire from the bowling team to bowl out the batting team and no contest between bat and ball.

Attacking fields? Pretty rare in most ODIs. In ODIs dobbers can be as or more effective as a decent 90mph+ bowler. Sure you get the odd match where the ball does something, or bowling at the death is a bit different, but it's mostly about not bowling a delivery that can be smashed at minimal risk.

To say there's no significance to losing wickets in Twenty20 just again shows your ignorance of it. Your logic for saying there is no contest between bat and ball is nothing short of laughable. In Twenty20 bowlers can dictate the course of a game as much as batsmen can, that's why there's a contest between bat and ball - of course the goalposts may change but that happens in all forms of cricket.

 

[Dissector]

Taking wickets is absolutely crucial in 20-20 games because in-form batsmen can often score 10+ runs an over at will. This was shown in the last semi-final when Australia was cruising before the wickets of Hayden, Symonds and Clarke completely turned the game around.

The same goes for the India-SA game when early wickets through good swing bowling destroyed the SA top order. RP Singh's spell in that game would have been effective in any form of the game.

 

[silentstriker]

It is so ridiculous to peddle ODIs as somehow a contest between bat and ball. They aren't. Economy rate is still king in ODIs, and believe it or not, Twenty20 at least doesn't pretend at anything.

I despise all limited overs cricket, but ODI actually pretends to be cricket, and I can't stand it. It's a bastard form that doesn't exactly know what it should be, and isn't really good at anything.

Twenty20 gets finished faster, and we don't have to suffer through the tedious middle overs where the batsmen don't attack, and the bowlers don't either. The great thing about Test cricket is that usually someone is attacking. If the batting gets down, the bowlers attack and have awesome fields, and vice versa when the bowling gets down. In ODIs, both sides seem to be perfectly content when just hitting singles for about 25 overs. It's quite disgusting.

 

[Dissector]

I have to disagree with the middle overs of ODI's being boring also. They can often be fascinating especially if you have good spin bowlers who can take wickets. Even if bowlers are in containment mode it can be quite interesting. Knocking 5 singles an over isn't as easy as it sometimes looks. Inevitably you get dot balls and the pressure starts building. Teams may be forced to become more aggressive with their running and the possibility of a run-out increases. Good teams will figure out how to get those crucial two's (whose role is underappreciated comapared to boudaries and singles). And so on.

Personally I like all three formats. I don't think 20/20 will affect the 10 or so tests that the top teams play a year. What they will do hopefully is to cut out some of the surplus ODI's like the 7 match series and the random tournaments in places like Malaysia. I would like about 10-12 less ODI's per year for each team replaced by around 15 or so 20/20 games.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Is Twenty20 too much fun for its own good?

A rather good and light-hearted article from Barney Ronay in The Guardian. Linky. His last paragraph sums the format up rather well:

But is it really good for us? There is a problem with Twenty20's relentlessness, its one-dimensional mania. Cricket has always been the most glacial of disciplines, one whose rewards are grudgingly given and carefully hoarded. Watching Twenty20 can feel a bit like shoving great, dripping double-handfuls of vintage moose milk cheese into your mouth, shot-gunning an entire bottle of Château Margaux 1953 on a stag do, or smashing down Salisbury Cathedral with a wrecking ball because the resulting pile of limestone will make a really fun playground to yomp about in - for half an hour or so before it gets boring. England are playing some Tests in Sri Lanka in December. Anyone ready for a nice, sedate five-day draw?

 

[SJS]

A rather good and light-hearted article from Barney Ronay in The Guardian. Linky. His last paragraph sums the format up rather well:

But is it really good for us? There is a problem with Twenty20's relentlessness, its one-dimensional mania. Cricket has always been the most glacial of disciplines, one whose rewards are grudgingly given and carefully hoarded. Watching Twenty20 can feel a bit like shoving great, dripping double-handfuls of vintage moose milk cheese into your mouth, shot-gunning an entire bottle of Château Margaux 1953 on a stag do, or smashing down Salisbury Cathedral with a wrecking ball because the resulting pile of limestone will make a really fun playground to yomp about in - for half an hour or so before it gets boring. England are playing some Tests in Sri Lanka in December. Anyone ready for a nice, sedate five-day draw?

*raises right hand*