Sport In a Microwave
Tony Horne reckons several other sports, including football, could learn from cricket's 20/20 format.
28 Aug 2011, 21:50
20-20 - Lessons for other sports
Saturday was 20/20 Finals Day at the cricket.
This sport, of course, is an acquired taste. I happen to love it in all its formats. The 20/20 version of the game was introduced around a decade ago when the sport was on its knees and administrators suddenly came to one or two startling conclusions. Namely, that the world had moved on and that young people were not attracted to a format that could last for five days and still achieve no result! In short, the only people sustaining county cricket were old. The next generation wouldn’t want to know.
Looking back, the administrators used to have such an old school mentality. Who can remember in very recent times Sunday being a rest day in the Test Matches? So, the one day of the week when the public are free to spend their money at the gate...no, don’t be daft, we’ll have a day off in the middle of the match!
So, 20/20 arrived and start times were tea times. What a great way to watch the sport – on your way home from the office and it was all over in no time at all. They had put cricket in a microwave and it came out shining. Originally, just a bit of a laugh, it’s now big buck business. This format of the game has taken over in many parts of the cricket world. If you’re really good like Kieron Pollard from the West Indies, you just travel the world as a 20/20 specialist. Mumbai today, Taunton tomorrow, Perth at the weekend. All the time picking up huge cheques for bowling 24 deliveries and facing not many more at the crease. Pollard rarely plays for his national side but can hit the ball off the globe. You want him in your side.
The point is this: it’s great to watch. Anything can happen. It’s full of risk, and often comedy too, it embraces technology which football still shuns but it fits the lifestyle of the modern man and woman in a way in which no sport has ever deviated from its original structure. Short thrills in manageable amounts – that’s the ethos.
Could this, therefore, ever happen to any other sport that the long-drawn out version of the game has a bitesize alternative?
Would there be the Super Sets at Wimbledon where Andy Murray and Rafa Nadal shoot it out in a big money winner-takes-all one set match with extra gimmicks thrown in? No, that’s ridiculous. Firstly, tennis doesn’t have a sustainable amount of big names on a global level let alone domestically, but it just doesn’t seem practical that Murray would fly in for twenty minutes tennis.
In rugby when they have the Sevens, it always seems an afterthought and often doesn’t feature the best players. I don’t watch this form of the game.
Is the real reason that it is only successful for cricket because the game was dying so fast that only a desperate idea had the chance of becoming a desperately good idea and that in truth, other sports just do not need updating? I don’t know but if you do follow tennis, you will often hear people bemoan “boring baseline rallies killing the game for the spectator”.
The problem, as I am about to show you in my next example, is that when you devise a new format, it looks stupid. In cricket they invented gimmicks like a “free hit” where you can’t be out. Do you not think that when that was mooted, most of the people round the table said “utter bollocks” and that now it’s one of the most exciting points of the game?
So let me throw this your way: The Carling Cup. That’s the football trophy your Boltons and Stokes dream of winning and that your real champions like Manchester United and Chelsea treat as a training ground run-out until it’s the final where they seem to still turn up. Scrap the whole thing now and take a look at 20/20.
One of the greatest pleasures watching on Saturday was that the tournament had a schoolboy mentality to it where you might play five games in a day on a Saturday towards the end of summer term and you mix with the other teams and the crowd and bring a picnic - the two semi-finals were played followed by the final and you had four teams sharing two dressing rooms and the losers stayed on to watch. Proper old-school attitude in the most modern of sporting environments.
So, would you watch if we binned The Carling Cup and replaced it with midweek five-a-sides with super gimmicks like non-stop subs and rush goalies?
At school, we played five-a-side tournaments. I don’t know why because there is no standard in the professional game. In the summer they show the regional masters on Sky but it’s only worth watching to see how fat Neville Southall is.
Honestly would you rather watch a team consisting of Cech, Terry, Lampard, Malouda and Torres displaying training ground skills in a genuinely competitive indoor environment with four teams on the bill once a month in the autumn before the FA Cup kicks in, or would you prefer to see them put out a second-string team away to Scunthorpe?
Just a thought.
You’re saying 'ridiculous'. I’m saying learn from the 20/20.
The author
Tony Horne
Network Broadcaster for UTV Media, Ghostwriter of “Bodyguard – My Life on the Front Line” with Craig Summers and “Tango 190” with PC David Rathband.
Full profile →
Comments (10)
Subscribe to this posts's comments feed
Howzat!!!! Another great article from TH, I'd would love to watch a great 5-A-side competition rather than the teams the EPL roll out in the carling cup or whatever its called this year, it would be a marketing success, FA take note
28/08/2011 22:19Idiot.
29/08/2011 13:41I live for the continual praise of reader John. The day he praises an article, I'm off. Otherwise, I know I've made it!
29/08/2011 19:18I think the 'microwaving of sport' could help maybe get more people to watch it, it just depends on the sport
Maybe a 5-a-side could help football, so long as they dont charge the earth of course
Just wondering what other sports you could do...
Possibly golf, (6 holes instead of 18, your allowed 2 extra shots over the par and you play your shots on that hole then the next person takes on the hole, none of this both tee off, then the furthest one back takes a shot until the hole is played)
29/08/2011 20:33Tony
Thing is, it would appear that the technical quality of the players is not enhanced by the likes of T20 cricket. We saw that with India this last summer, many of the Indian batsmen didn't have the patience and the ability to get themselves into an innings and were playing shots right from the off, without actually being the right situation or condition. Through playing lots of matches in the IPL and similar, they'd lost that knack of playing themselves in. Kevin Pietersen, who is an exciting player on his day, seemed to have it all worked out by the end of the season.
T20 may pay the bills, but it doesn't nothing for the players. Entertaining? Sure. But it terms of quality and technical abilty? Er, no. That has been sacrificed in the name of money. T20 has its place but in terms of the essence of the game, the longer versions build a player's ability and then makes them able to play the shorter form more effectively.
Just my 0.02
30/08/2011 18:06A great and thought-provoking read.
30/08/2011 18:28Message to Rob O - spot on of course...how sad that T20 is bigger in India than tests and they were number one test team. Look at Sehwag - injured but played in IPL - turns up for 3rd test and gets a pair!
I think see the blog as - "we have busy lives, can sport accommodate the spectator and keep them there for the duration rather than its detrimental effect on skillsets"
Make sense?
Strangely Pot Black was the original 20/20 don't you think?
I mean, what's all those 35 frame matches about?!
30/08/2011 19:26C'mon Horne, i've done my bit...
30/08/2011 20:21I am more prone to watch the crossbar challenge on Soccer AM than I am the match that follows, which is strange because in a match you have failed if you hit the bar. On Soccer AM you are rewarded. Are we encouraging training pitches up and down the country to replicate this and breed a nation of
failures?
If this dialogue reaches its logical conclusion and we now break sport down into disciplines and skillsets rather than contests, there will be no sport at all.
However, if that itself leads us to a Friday night revival of Superstars with genuine sportsmen like Kevin Keegan and Andy Ripley engaging in genuine disciplines, some of which are alien to them rather than the whole contest itself, then that would be at least a good thing.
02/09/2011 11:31I quite like the idea of cutting out the four days of boredom at The Open by just going straight to a play-off hole! However, golf enthusiasts would argue that a one off hole has no drama without the four days pre-amble. You can’t just move straight to the play-off can you? Furthermore, if you did, think of all that money lost in TV coverage. A fifteen minute slot rather than ten hours a day for four days – most sports would go to the wall!
04/09/2011 21:16