I have changed my mind about limited over cricket. When this slash and burn form of the game began to emerge prominently I was accustomed to dismiss it as a superficial and corrupt version of 
the great game. Here is one example of how I expressed my distaste:
“I regret, if not exactly deplore, the cancerous growth of the shorter versions of the great game. They should not be dignified with the name of cricket. Licket and lashet may be appropriate for One-day and Twenty/20 contests – both sports in the sense of a good fete. Licket and lashet can be very exciting. But that is the point – all, at best, they can be is exciting. They do not have the scope to be anything other or more than that. The whole essence of the thing is a nail-biting finish and if there isn’t one the proceedings lack any interest. When these games become a foregone conclusion, which they often do, there is absolutely nothing more boring in the whole of sport. Real cricket is quite different. It provides much more varied and subtle passages of interest and pleasure. Even within a drawn game there may be treasures of batting and bowling as well as subsidiary dramas and crises which give considerable and lasting satisfaction. You can look for no such thing in licket and lashet. Everything is sacrificed to an exciting climax… One of the more depressing developments in the modern world is how instant this and instant that have become the dominant fashion. It is, of course, part of the rapid and unstoppable growth of the consumer society which has been set up as the one great model all the world must follow – more and more and more of less and less and less of anything that really has substance and value and lasting significance. Licket and lashet are part and parcel of this terrible trend. In their own way they are as much a sign of the times as fast-food outlets.”
There remains, for me, an element of truth in this original view. And I have not retreated from my view that Test cricket is and always will be the true test of the full range of skills and challenges in the game and that victory at that level is the great prize.
However, I have gradually become convinced that T20 cricket in particular has developed its own skills and tactics and merits and heroes and sagas and has therefore attained the status of a legitimate and important sport in its own right and not simply a spectacle, an entertainment, a fete.
Take just one example. T20 cricket has been instrumental in developing fielding into a fine and dynamic art, marvellous to behold, especially at the boundary line. And who can doubt that the art of hitting a cricket ball clean and hard and far is not best expressed in T20 cricket. And ‘bowling at the death’ is a specialist aspect of the game that is new and interesting. I recognize that T20 cricket is rapidly adding to its roll-call of champions, its record of extraordinary deeds and is creating its own tradition of exceptional performances and unforgettable drama. I no longer feel that I can disparage this cricket or put it on a level lower than other three-hour long games – football, basketball, baseball, tennis for example – which I enjoy and recognise as delivering memorable and lasting sporting contests.
And in addition, of course, it is the form of the game which generates the most money and will spread the game’s popularity worldwide. By 2030 America and China will be in the running to stage the T20 World Cup.
A good friend in whom I confided my change of heart suggested to me, a little cynically I thought, that such a change seemed to coincide suspiciously with the emergence of the West Indies as a force always to be reckoned with, indeed champions currently, in this form of the game. Well, I strongly maintain that is not the reason for my conversion on the path to Damascus, but I admit I am very happy the West Indies are at the top and leading the way. I wish they could rise again in Test cricket, but champions of T20 cricket is good enough to be going on with as that game gains more and more legitimacy.
My change of mind about T20 cricket is sincere, but I feel there is a fundamental deficiency in it which needs to be corrected if it is to make further progress in its growth towards full maturity. In T20 cricket there badly needs to be some re-balancing between batting and bowling in a game too heavily weighted in favour of batting. How to go at least some way to achieve that will be for another column. Enough for now to acknowledge the coming of age of T20 cricket.
