Chhotu Cricket - “Change the Game”

Innovation in every field always improves the core area. Innovative ideas help to do the things differently. Innovative thinking brings excitement and banishes boredom.  Innovative people make the surrounding atmosphere joyous and enjoying.  Our game of cricket is not an exception to it. No doubt Test cricket had its charm and class flowing till 70’s. But the game lovers, at some corner of their mind, were getting bored due to long and no-result matches. At this point around 1973, official one-day cricket took birth. The concept of World Cup followed within two years, in 1975. It gave new direction to the game of Cricket, Limited over game with 99.99% chances of results.

Kary Paker, the Australian businessman went one… no yaar, ten steps ahead and to everyone’s surprise, introduced night cricket with white ball, colored clothing, and flood lights. Running between the wickets of the cricket really accelerated. Until 1992, night cricket was limited to Australia only. But commercialization and TRP facilitated its existence in every cricket-playing country soon.  50-over matches with field restriction, power plays, player switching, specialist batsmen, opening the bowling with spinners, high class fielding improved cricket looks from retro style to modern era. 

 

But still Cricket was not getting the highs and dynamics of soccer.  In 50-over matches, first 15 overs and last 10 overs were yielding maximum excitement. This time, Mr. Stanford observed it and started the Stanford T-20 league. (Mr. Stuart Robbinson had initiated the concept with ECB). This innovation also started gripping the audience, especially the T- teenagers as the maximum thrill was available in only three-hours game. This format evolved very fast and chasing a target of 180 to 200 runs in 20 overs didn’t look impossible. The specialized T-20 game-changers like Gayle, Mcullum, D. Warner, A.B. Deviliers, David Hussey played with such an ease as if the spectators would believe that you need only bat to hammer the bowler in T-20 matches. The definition of commentary also changed.  Out-swing, in-swing, seam, spin... these words got replaced by tournament sixes, strike rate, switch hit, dot ball. Unlike One-day matches, every T-20 match is promised to be a close encounter, no matter how great Cricket Pandit you are, predicting the result of the match always proved to be a dangerous affair. The chances of tie have got an increasing trend. The Super Over concept resembled to Penalty Shoot-out of Soccer. 

The big bash of Chhotu Cricket “The T-20 World Cup” will commence in few days. In the teams prospective, I think Australia, S.Africa, India and Sri-Lanka would have an upper hand. Pak and NZ could produce the thrust if they manage to keep the consistency. New and lower-ranked teams might spring some surprises. In the battle of batting, the kings of Chhotu format - Warner, Mcullum, Dilshan, Gayle, A.B Devilliers, Yuvraj Singh, Kielsweter would sparkle on the small Lankan grounds. Though the bowlers are on the ground just for serving the batsmen, the likes of Malinga, Zaheer, Michel Starc, Umar Gul, Dale Steyn, plus the spinners Ashwin, Devnarine, Vettori, aging but still effective Brad Hogg can throw challenges towards the batsmen.

Every team is showing the confidence of winning; let’s see who converts the available potential energy into performance and change the game to taste the BARFI of world cup..!

Ritesh Kadam

rityakadam@rediffmail.com

Cell:-09011020015