Twenty 20 Cricket

I have watched the Twenty 20 International with Australia and England. I have also seen some to the action in the domestic Twenty 20 competition, otherwise known as the KFC Big Bash. I’m still unsure where this form of cricket fits in the spectrum of cricketing genres.

It is a completely different game and should be treated as such. Therefore I believe it needs different players and different tactics:

• Accurate medium pacers and spinners seem to be more successful than the quicks. This is because the batter is forced to provide most of the pace to reach the boundary after being forced to go the slog (Steve Waugh would have been well suited as he was accurate with good changes of pace).
• Not all batters can succeed at this game. A lot of batters like to spend time to get settled and even when then they are more inclined to work the ball around for singles. The batters required in this game need to be clean hitters who have no problems clearing the boundary (think Adam Gilchrist & Andrew Symonds).
• On top of all that they need to be expert fielders.

Just like how the Australian Rugby 7’s team doesn’t have any Wallaby test players, I think Australia’s Twenty20 team should comprise of mainly up and comers with maybe someone like Michael Clarke as captain to see if he’s future test captain material. It would be good to see the next generation of Aussie Cricket stars given an opportunity to shine. We have already seen some success of injecting some new blood in players like Ben Hilfenhaus and Mitchell Johnson.

So will it eventually take over from the current one-day series? I don’t think so. I suspect it will run as it is for a long time, if not forever. It is hard to take the game seriously but it is still of worth due to the entertainment factor.