Why Twenty20 cricket is becoming so popular
When cricket began as a sport, there was only one format of the game - test cricket. It was and still is the proper format of cricket and the real test of a cricketer. Tests' were the real deal, the actual game that brought together both professionals and real cricketers. Whenever anyone thought about cricket in those days, test cricket was the way forward. It seems to be that if a person from yesteryear had predicted the future would have different types of cricket, no one would take them seriously. They probably would not have believed that there could be anything other than test cricket.
Looking at the world of cricket today, we see that there are different formats of the game and all are still very popular amongst the common people. The three main formats of the game are test cricket, one-day internationals and the newest addition to the cricket fraternity - T20 Cricket. What is interesting is that all these formats originated because of viewer demand. People it seems wanted to watch different formats of the game. Some fans still love watching test cricket and still consider it to be the only and true form of the game. Some don’t have enough time for test cricket but still love the sport and love the ease and flexibility that one day cricket brings for them. And finally, there are those who feel that even one day cricket is too long and they need something even shorter than that; something that will be over in 3 and a half hours and they can watch a match and then go back and do whatever they need to in their personal lives.
Test cricket being the longest form of the game lasts for five days. Many people including myself cannot understand how someone can watch a game of cricket for that long. It gets so boring when the bowlers keep bowling to the same batsman and the batsmen keep tapping it repeatedly until he finally either hits it to the boundary or gets out. However, by the time any such event occurs, the person watching it is fast asleep. But there are those fans of test cricket that say it is all about watching the subtleties of the game and seeing how the bowlers react to the batsman and how the batsman reacts to the changing bowling line up. Overall, test cricket really is not a viewer’s format.
With the advent of one-day cricket, the whole idea of a five-day test transformed into one day. With the number of overs reduced and the bowlers and batsmen adjusting to play the game in a shorter time, things changed dramatically. This led to an exciting format of the game come to life. People could not watch test cricket anymore because they felt it was too boring. The quest for finding a format that was fast, quick and easy to watch originated from the advent of ODI's. It was exciting and it finished in only one day. The fans had a champion format that they could call their own.
However, soon fans got tired of one-day matches too and demanded something even shorter. It is interesting to find out how the people who invented T20 cricket actually came up with the format or how they measured fan reactions to wanting a smaller game. The format that the fans demanded became the Twenty-Twenty format of the game or T20. T20 was a twenty over match where the game was very short, exciting and fun for both teams involved. A game lasted only three and a half hours and the teams playing had to develop a new style of play.
No team could be counted out because the format became so short and furious that even teams that didn’t even play test cricket could become very good at the T20 format. As time has gone by, T20 has become a very serious format of the game and it is not all fun and games anymore. People are investing heavily in this new format and the fan following is growing larger and larger every day. Let us hope that this time round, we do not converge to five over a side matches very soon because fans got bored of T20.
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