James Lawton: Cricket should not be fun – Twenty20 has stripped it of intrigue and brutality
Real men shouldn't dress up in garish outfits and prostitute a game of sublime potential
Cricket "purists," for want of a better dirty word, are constantly being told it is time for them to wrap themselves in old army blankets, lie under the stars and await their admission to that happy hunting ground where their heroes do not dress up in pyjamas and lunge, with extreme predictability and ugliness, at almost every ball bowled in their direction.
However, the suggestion has rarely been as compelling, surely, as on Sunday, when England beat Pakistan in a Twenty20 match of such banality it was quite often hard to look.
The late Harold Pinter once declared, "Cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth." It wasn't on this occasion. It seemed more like evolution in reverse.
Twenty20 contrives its thrills in a crayon-drawn format so pre-ordained, so soul-grindingly repetitive, that its defenders declare it foolproof, but then what happens when one of two allegedly competitive teams has neither the form nor the inclination to make a match of it? We saw it at The Oval on Sunday night. It is a hideously jerked-up formulaic parody of the real game, the one that delighted such as Pinter and Samuel Beckett and was once lauded by a visiting African chieftain, a guest at Lord's of the Foreign Office, as the finest, most elaborate and still most subtle rain-making ceremony ever devised. Twenty20 is about as subtle as a ram-raid.
Any idea that all the hype in the world might just sustain for cricket a rather higher status was somewhat shot through by the beaten Pakistani captain Younis Khan when he declared, "We didn't field very well and it is a problem for us at the moment. But Twenty20 is a fun game. It's meant to be fun, that's all." If only it was, Younis.
The problem is that it is supposed to be so much more than that. It is the straight-faced projection of the salvation of cricket. It is the way, we are told, to prise the kids away from King Football and maintain, more effectively than ever more, the downward motion of the game's nose in the great trough of television.
This, of course, wasn't quite the image being projected by England's captain Paul Collingwood, who declared, "I'm loving the captaincy now but I wasn't loving it on Friday night" (when a Dutch debt collector heaved two sixes at Lord's by way of match-winning momentum). "I know I have 11 good men in the dressing room who have backed me up. They wanted to go out there and show what they could do and they did that. They showed their character and it shows we have real men in the dressing room."
Real men don't eat quiche. In a perfect world nor do they dress up in garish outfits and prostitute a game of sublime potential. However, we know it's far from perfect and no-one is saying that free men shouldn't be able to pursue the richest possible living. However, some day the golden penny may drop that Twenty20 is not a game but a fad, a brief and foredoomed exploration of cricket's most sensational possibilities. The trouble with sensation is that you can have a little bit too much of it.
In separate parts of his excellent new book, And God Created Cricket, TV analyst Simon Hughes writes hauntingly about the misplaced appeal of the old game – as so magnificently demonstrated in the 2005 Ashes series – and the appeal of Twenty20. With a nice touch of ambivalence, he writes of the latter, "There were inevitable reservations from the purists, a euphemism for the short-sighted and the hard of hearing, suggesting that Twenty20 wasn't a proper contest between bat and ball (actually, I might have said that).
"But the compensations were huge. The 5.30 start benefited everyone. You could see all the skills of the game – even the forward defensive and the shouldering of arms, occasionally – compressed into two and a half hours, sipping wine and sitting next to Julia from accounts, and still be able to go out for dinner/get home in time for supper afterwards.
"The players, ground down by the monotonous routine, revelled in the concept and the public response, and in only having to report for work at 4pm – and knock off at 8.30 – and their enjoyment was infection. Twenty20 made cricket fun again – and almost cool. I said almost."
Whoever said cricket had to be fun? Cricket is supposed to be thrilling and absorbing, attritional and brilliant, intriguing and brutal, and always filled with the possibility of moments of great beauty and power. Twenty20 seeks to make every hack slogger look like Viv Richards. Sometimes, as it was when the Pakistanis fretted and jabbed without a glimmer of hope, the impersonation is both cheap and about as enjoyable as a session of canal work at the dentists.
If the Oval action had somehow left you still the right side of a coma you merely had to switch channels to watch a study of West Indian cricket at the apex of its glory. It ran on the BBC, which used to cover live, real cricket, and some of the images were quite haunting: there was Gary Sobers, bowling, spin and seam, and batting like a god, hitting six sixes in one over, and there were the young Viv Richards and Brian Lara, dissecting the field with shots which might have been fired from a rifle.
If that was the past, and the gunk we saw on at The Oval was the future, yes, indeed it may be time to reach for that old blanket.
Setanta's struggles suggest football is no longer in its own league
So according to the ledgers of Setanta television, it seems that outbidding all your rivals for a big football contract is not necessarily a licence to set up your own mint. Now this is a twist, is it not?
That the life-threatening crisis of the Irish TV company should come in the same week that we learned of Liverpool's problematic financial future must, at the very least, provoke questions about the banker assumption that the game will always be besieged by eager paymasters, and that in the meantime all the normal requirements of good business practice can be be put on one side.
The most optimistic scenario is that the appeal of the world game will always operate in a captive market, whatever the degree of wider economic strain. The nightmare, on the other hand, is that football will, like everyone else, feel a sharp pinch indeed. And then upon what does it fall back? Unfortunately it is not years of hard-headed management and an understanding that any league is, ultimately, only as strong as its weakest member.
They do say that pride always comes before the fall. Ditto, the ungovernable arrogance to believe that for some reason you are quite separate from the rest of an embattled world. This no doubt is still enshrined in the working philosophy of the upper echelons of English football. However, if anyone is going to blink this is probably the time.
Reality bites at last for lucky Lewis
As Jenson Button luxuriates in the success that took so long to come, and lavishes praise on his engineers, it seems that the reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton is beginning to grasp some of the realities of a business which didn't require him to wait hardly at all.
Hamilton talked of the need for patience after guiding his ailing McLaren into 13th place and declared, "I see my role from now on as helping the team to cure the problems with this year's car and to make next year's car the best it can possibly be. When the team gives me a car to win, I will win."
Yep, that's the deal Lewis. You put in the hours in the pit, you glean a fraction of second here and there, and maybe you get to to be the fastest of them all again. Ideally, you also reflect on the fact that if, say, Robert Kubica or Nico Rosberg had started out with a machine as fast as the one you were given in your first season there might still be everything to prove.
Meanwhile, Button sets a splendid example each time he revisits the podium. He reminds us that if Formula One ever wants to create a genuine sense of a truly competitive drivers' challenge it still has quite a bit of levelling to do.
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Comments
When you take subtlety out of a game, the current incarnation of baseball is what you get. Dominated by A-Rod and Manny, while cleans like Jeter linger in the shadows. American culture is reflected in their sport. Quick, aggressive, powerful entertainment for the beer-swilling, hot-dog-stuffing multitudes. Look at NASCAR, would you?
You have no platform from which to criticize cricket. Gentlemen play the game. Ugly incidents aside, the general ethos remains unscarred. A cricket pitch is a place of mystery and greatness. A baseball diamond is a shrine to the lust for power and linear superstardom.
Shoosh, man.
P.S - Siddistani - great comment, had me chuckling.
You can talk about the nuances and different versions of the game, but the lack of TV coverage is the greatest threat to the game.
www.millarcrime.com
Thank you cricket!
You can keep the 20 slog game if that's what you want, but give me a test match any day.
Just in case you failed to notice Test Cricket does still exist and is doing very nicely. 2020 cricket was created to generate new cricket fans at a time when the sport was suffering and it has done so - last season in the UK gates were up in all formats of the game (granted they are down this year, but it has more to do with the recession than 2020 despite the claims of the 2020 haters). The biggest problems Cricket had for years was that it had stagnated and the exclusivity and snobbishness of a certain section of its long standing support who see themselves as above the man in the street and actively helped drive potential new supporters away. 2020 has generated new supporters which the sport desperately needed and was after all the main reason for its creation - it has been a success.
Further to this it is not the slog fest a lot of its detractors claim it to be, the majority of most successful batsmen at 2020 all play proper cricket shots and what exactly is so wrong about seeing a great batsmen hit a magnificent 6 of a bad ball (or a good one for that matter). Spin bowling has also become a very effective weapon in 2020 which very few expected when it was launched and has helped hone the skills of several spin bowlers. You are part of the Taliban of cricket who seem to fear change or anything new and the new supporters and interest that change attracts, it was that attitude that held cricket back for years whilst other sports accepted and adapted to changing times. Claiming that it is a 'fad' and pretending that it isn't 'real' cricket is just deliberately missing the point, additionally it is not 2020's fault that the BBC doesn't cover Test Cricket anymore - that would be the BBC's fault.
I love cricket I think it is a great sport and 2020 has helped the sport since its creation not hindered it - fielding has improved, bowlers have to think on their feet, batsmen have created new shots and above all else it has generated the new supporters that the sport needed; there are many more families attending cricket these days than there ever used to be. This is typical of the problems within cricket - 2020 has achieved and exceeded its objectives so the people who never wanted it in the first place have to resort to pathetic arguments about colored kits (which by the way existed prior to 2020), what makes a 'real man or pretending that one one sided games are exclusive to the 20 over version of the game.
Honestly shave your beard off and embrace the 21st century.
Your opinion is almost exclusively held by older, more experienced fans. That's neither surprising nor contemptible. It's just natural, you've seen the game in all its forms and prefer Tests.Fine.
But we've got kids flocking to our local club to take up bats and balls to emulate their heroes - and 20/20 is a big part of winning the battle for the attention of the young. Look at the age of the crowds.
Over time, we watch those kids grow and naturally develop an appreciation of all forms of the game. Teenagers who go on about 'boring 30-40 hour games' don't know what's coming. They nearly all turn into Test nuts as they hit their twenties. Have a little faith in people's ability to make sensible judgments, mate.
The dangerous arrogance of the cricket 'old guard' risks dividing the sport far more than the raw appeal of 20/20 alone. It's the responsibility of every cricket fan to at least try to appreciate the game in all its forms and not denigrate others' love of the game.
That's what being a real gentleman is, as opposed to a just grumpy git posing in a panama - which I'm sure you're not, are you?
Poor pakistanis they dont know anything about social etiquette! SOUR GRAPES is word theyare looking at , Maybe all the other bar sri lanka india and south africa are feelingt he same.
Rock on T20.
I fail to see why so many people have to make a mountain out of a molehill, if you do not like Twenty20 then don't watch it, there's no need tocry about it now is there!!
I for one am enjoying the Twenty20 and will also be watching the Ashes series as well. Different forms with different aspects to appeal to different tastes.
But wait... not all Test cricket, surely? Bangladesh versus Zimbabwe (or WI versus ENG circa May 2009)... due apologies to all concerned nations... I'm supposed to care for that more than a T20 because... Just because it's TEST CRICKET? Ah, right. So Test Cricket is not supposed to have any real value to it for the viewer, it's superior just because... well just because it is, silly! On which note: "What happens when one of two allegedly competitive teams has neither the form nor the inclination to make a match of it?" Er... England versus West Indies Test Matches, anyone?
Lets stop with the T20 bashing please. It's a new form of the game. It is not the most important form of the game, but it has it's place, it's entertainment value. We may have 32 teams in the T20 world cup of 2017, but only 8 playing Tests. And hey, i have no problems with that...
It is likely, however, that the Twenty-20 version will pall and wither away once it is seen what a shallow entertainment it is. (If the Americans don't like proper cricket, so what?)
JOHN GIBBS
Mexico City
I do enjoy your writing style and whether I agree or disagree with your opinions I take great pleasure in reading your articles.
However, I was very disturbed by the battering you gave 20/20 cricket today with the justification stemming from the statement...
"but then what happens when one of two allegedly competitive teams has neither the form nor the inclination to make a match of it?"
Any match in any sport would prove to be ghastly to watch under such circumstances.
For the most part though 20/20 can provide masses of entertainment. Fantastic cricket from slog hitting to masterful stroke play and incredible bowling to outstanding fielding (plus all the mishaps and mistakes inbetween.) Mostly though it condenses all that cricket is into 40 overs.
We live in a fast paced world and test cricket appeals only to cricketing purists. Sport lovers, like myself, who want a taste of football, rugby, basketball, formula one etc. love the fact that an entire world class cricket match can be seen in minute by minute without having to forgo everything else in life for 5 whole days...
For this reason efforts to render it accessible to the sparsely furnished mental landscape of the average American have to be a mistake, and will not be achieved without significant loss at both the intellectual and spiritual level. You may still call it cricket, or 'cricket for a fast-paced world', but the damage will have been done.
Let us then applaud Richard231. His solipsistic 'take' on matters - including the usual quotation from that over-rated Marxist oirishmen - demonstrates with utter clarity that for he and his compatriots appreciating the intrinsic merits of a game come a distant second to ordering changes to things they don't like.
But so what if they don't understand the Ashes (and a good deal else besides)? Why should they? Children (I prefer it to the more ideological 'kids') demand excitement. That is what children do - until they learn that excitement tends to follow a principle of diminishing returns and is anyway just as frequently the reward of patience and study and absorption as it is the next infantile Hollywood blockbuster. American billionaire John Paul Getty III 'got' the message. A cricket (that is to say the 3 and 4 day game) fanatic he has proved a wonderful friend to the game.
Who knows? If Americans in general ever grow up they too might change their mind.
You have a point if by 'matters' you mean English lack of success. However it is enough to have invented most sports of international renown. It would be impolite to be good at them as well. Now I suggest you get back to watching wigger-ball on the dude-tube.