20/20 cricket

[Smudge]

I heard about Cricket Max a few years ago. Weren't they gonna have a world championship but it got cancelled? Is it still going and what are the rules?

No it's not still going.

The rules were that each side had two innings of ten overs.

A few quirks were:

- If a bowler bowled a no ball, the next ball was a free hit (the only way you could get out was a run-out).
- At each end of the ground, there were Max Zones to encourage people to hit straight. These started just past the 30 metre circle and were probably about 25 metres wide - getting wider as you got closer to the boundary. If the ball went in there, it doubled your score. Originally you could not be caught in there, but that was changed.
- Wides and no balls were worth 2 I think.

Originally Martin Crowe (who developed it) had four stumps at each end, but that wee experiment was dropped pretty quickly.

There were 12 players on each team, but 11 on the field, and you could swap the batsmen round between each innings.

Can't think of anything else off the top of my head.

 

[thierry henry]

Cricket Max was introduced in New Zealand, and ran as a proper competition with all the first class teams from, correct me if I'm wrong, 1996/97?

It was also a 20 overs a side game, except that each team had 2 innings of 10 overs each. This is the major "difference" between the games.

The other major difference was that "Max Zones" were painted onto the field straight down the ground, and shots into the Max Zone were worth double runs.

These were the two main differences between 20/20 and CricketMax. Personally I liked both and thus preferred Max to 20/20. Nevertheless, after initially high popularity (matches were often televised and crowds were in the thousands, both relatively rare in NZ domestic cricket) CricketMax kept on fading and received less and less emphasis from NZ Cricket, until it disappeared entirely a couple of years ago. I'm not really sure why.

Anyway, the point is that 20/20 is obviously a very minor modification of CricketMax, and it can hardly be said that they are seriously different games, or that one is much better than the other.

 

[thierry henry]

Why did the players hate it Voltman?

And (question for anyone) who came up with the idea for 20/20? Is it a shameless modification of Max, or do the English simply pretend that Max never existed?

 

[Smudge]

Why did the players hate it Voltman?

And (question for anyone) who came up with the idea for 20/20? Is it a shameless modification of Max, or do the English simply pretend that Max never existed?

The feelings I got from the rep guys at our club was that it was just a competition thrust on them because of Crowe's association with Sky and NZ Cricket. Some of them also felt their techniques suffered because, despite the encouragement to hit straight, it turned into a slogfest regardless.

 

[thierry henry]

Fair enough, don't see how it's any different to 20/20 though (I know you're not saying that it is)

 

[Smudge]

Fair enough, don't see how it's any different to 20/20 though (I know you're not saying that it is)

I'm not sold on it - feels like change for the sake of change.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Fair enough, don't see how it's any different to 20/20 though (I know you're not saying that it is)

Because it's 20 over innings, gives a player to construct an innings to an extent rather than Max which was 2 10 over innings which was out and out slogging.

 

[thierry henry]

Please....so you really think that's the difference, and that's why 20/20 will succeed and Max failed? Because you can build an innings?

 

[12th Man]

Power Cricket

A couple of years ago, Britain experimented with Power Cricket at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff. Teams had two innings of 15 overs and got 6 runs for hitting it into the first tier of the ground. 8 for the middle, 10 for the top and 12 if you hit the roof. Nobody did. It was played on a matted wicket sideways across the pitch. Britain lost 2-0 to the Rest of the World. Power Cricket was never seen a again.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Because it's still cricket but played very aggressively - bowlers get it right they'll get wickets and restrict a side as Shoaib did early on in the Pak-Aus A game, rather than Max which was over-complicated with the Max zones and was just a slogfest in the end.

 

[Smudge]

Another one of the problems with Max was that often a side was out of the running after one innings, having capitulated for 45 after the opposition got 130 off the 10. While big deficits can be clawed back in tests, it just wasn't possible in the short time available in Max.

 

[Scaly piscine]

A couple of years ago, Britain experimented with Power Cricket at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff. Teams had two innings of 15 overs and got 6 runs for hitting it into the first tier of the ground. 8 for the middle, 10 for the top and 12 if you hit the roof. Nobody did. It was played on a matted wicket sideways across the pitch. Britain lost 2-0 to the Rest of the World. Power Cricket was never seen a again.

I'm pretty sure it was only 2 innings (each) of 10 overs, it's not really comparable with Max or Twenty20 because it was more of a one-off trial.

Edit: I should also add it got crowds of barely over 1000 if I remember rightly, whereas Twenty20 has gotten full houses at grounds where there hasn't been one for decades.

 

[bryce]

another reason why i liked max was to help players learn to bat/bowl at the death - the only reason i think it was thrown out and Twenty20 hasn't been is simply because it is played in England where some of the 'important' people in cricket are as opposed to NZ, i like Max better, lots of different rules as opposed to Twenty20 where it is just a rain reduced ODI in theory.
Voltman- Max is still played ?

 

[thierry henry]

I agree totally Bryce, and I can't believe that SP is seriously trying to argue that 20/20 is more sucessful because it is a better game...c'mon mate, they are basically the same thing, if anything 20/20 is just a lot less innovative. They're both slogfests.

 

[Smudge]

another reason why i liked max was to help players learn to bat/bowl at the death - the only reason i think it was thrown out and Twenty20 hasn't been is simply because it is played in England where some of the 'important' people in cricket are as opposed to NZ, i like Max better, lots of different rules as opposed to Twenty20 where it is just a rain reduced ODI in theory.
Voltman- Max is still played ?

It was cancelled during the players' strike in 2002 and I believe one of the bargaining points that was agreed to by the players was to scrap Cricket Max.

I'm not 100% on that, but this article gives that idea, in a watered-down kind of way:

But NZC last week cancelled the annual season-opening 'Cricket Max' tournament between the six first-class provinces, a mini version of the one-day game, and the national second XI competition due to begin in January.

While the Max tournament is unlikely to be revived, NZC may still resurrect the second XI competition

http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2002/nov/11nz.htm

 

[Scaly piscine]

I agree totally Bryce, and I can't believe that SP is seriously trying to argue that 20/20 is more sucessful because it is a better game...c'mon mate, they are basically the same thing, if anything 20/20 is just a lot less innovative. They're both slogfests.

Given that there has already been 2 seasons of Twenty20 in domestic cricket here I think I'm in a far better position to comment (and seen who's scored the runs - Counties tried bringing in sloggers from Minor County cricket etc. and it didn't work). I'd also call Cricket Max over-complicated more than innovative. Shame Pakistan is 17-3 after 4 overs anyways...

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Given that there has already been 2 seasons of Twenty20 in domestic cricket here I think I'm in a far better position to comment (and seen who's scored the runs - Counties tried bringing in sloggers from Minor County cricket etc. and it didn't work). I'd also call Cricket Max over-complicated more than innovative. Shame Pakistan is 17-3 after 4 overs anyways...

Yeah. Even this one game today shows that orthodox batsmen who are good hitters do better than blind sloggers. Afridi failed miserably, while David Hussey (far from a slogger) played very well. I would expect people like Symonds, Gilchrist, Flintoff, Lara, Cairns, Sehwag etc who are solid batsmen who hit the ball very well to do well in international Twenty20 cricket, moreso than pure sloggers.

 

[thierry henry]

Blind sloggers will never succeed in any kind of cricket. I never suggested that. We could argue the rights and wrongs of Max v 20/20 all day, but I'm not interested in that. My opinion is that the games are too similar to justify one succeeding and another failing.

 

[Arrow]

Afridi has turned into an utter joke. he doesnt seem to even take himself seriously anymore.
If you payed someone to go and try to get themselves out in the quickest way possible, he would play like afridi.

 

[Scaly piscine]

Blind sloggers will never succeed in any kind of cricket. I never suggested that. We could argue the rights and wrongs of Max v 20/20 all day, but I'm not interested in that. My opinion is that the games are too similar to justify one succeeding and another failing.

Except you said they're both slogfests so if that were true blind sloggers would do well in Twenty20 and as you've accepted they don't. Anyway just believe me when I say that a 10 over innings is considerably different to a 20 over innings.