Twenty20 – the future

Now the Texan billionaire Allen Sanford is looking to launch a T20 that wd be make more millionaires out of cricketers and Pakistan is wondering about launching its own T20 league. I guess soon we would be seeing a la soccer T20 leagues launched by every cricket playing country (Australia and England included) because the money involved seems to be too tempting to be foregone.

I am willing to stick my neck out and say that T20 will, first, kill ODIs and then Test cricket. And then, finally, itself. The attendance at the T20 games of English counties is a pointer in this direction.

As a hard core cricket fan I don’t think T20 will be the requiem for Test Cricket.  Test Cricket would, like the proverbial Phoenix, rise again in anew avatar once the T20 plays out itself.

Cricket, tennis or baseball?

Virendar Sehwag smashed 4,6,4,6,4,6 of an over from Andrew Symonds in today’s IPL Twenty20 match between Deccan Chargers and Delhi Daredevils in Hyderabad. Sunil Gavaskar was quite amused by the sequence and wondered whether the hitting resembled a VIP telephone number!

Surprise that ever smart Gavaskar could not see the obvious! It read like a tennis match score line 4-6, 4-6, 4-6!

If you have been watching the much hyped IPL T20 games you would wonder whether it is cricket or baseball! Brendon McCullum on day one and Sehwag today surely would make Neville Cardus turn in his grave. Or may be Neville Cardus’ grave itself would turn?

Cricket, F1 and Commercial Breaks

They say “lies, damn lies and statistics.”

Obviously that was coined in BC – Before tv Commercials!

In the IPL Twenty20 just going on in Hyderabad (Deccan Chargers v Daredevils of Delhi) Ajay Jadeja the anchor announced a “short, little commercial break”. And it lasted over just full five minutes and more!

And every time Steve Slater announces the ‘final break” and promises to take th e viewers to the chequered flag in FI Racing you can be sure – more than death and taxes – that there would be at the least one more commercial break than the most admirable Slater promises.

Yes, sponsors make it possible to view such entertainment programs as cricket and Formula One Racing live. And so we are not suuposed to crib.

I wonder if any avid sport enthusiast ever noticed those com.brks!

Advertisers, think of something less disruptive but more inventive for your messages!

In the meanwhile it will be “lies, damn lies and commercial break announcements”.