England have lost to the Netherlands at Rounders. Big deal. Now, can we ignore this Twenty20 nonsense and start playing cricket?
The football equivalent of this dreadful dumbing down of a great game is to forget the match and go straight to the penalty shootout!
15 comments:
wot the hell this isnt really about west ham is it
You obviously know nothing about 20/20
I think you're deluding yourself somewhat if you think 20/20 is anything other than the future of cricket. The one day game rules in most places and 20/20 is the natural progression. Test cricket is barely watched in places like India, Pakistan and the West Indies. People just don't want to watch five days of anything anymore. Personally, I'm not big cricket fan and I don't mind test matches but surely the lack of interest in all but a couple of test nations will see it die out?
Den, they said the same about 50 over cricket but that's all but dead. Twenty/20 will mutate into baseball / rounders at some point. It is a hit and hope fiasco that panders to morons. Cricket is an intellectual sport - and nothing beats a full day at a test match with gin and tonics, salmon rolls, hot sunshine and seven plus hours of great debate with mates ranging over every topic you can imagine. Maybe, one day, it will just be England and Australia playing it, winter and summer, home and away. That will still work just as Oxford v Cambridge works in the boat race!
1025, there is a world beyond West Ham.
yes, there is a world outside of west ham... but is there any way you can not have these posts appear on the west ham newsnow page? your blog basically spams the newsfeed.
Hardly! Didn't you know that Graham Gooch trained with West Ham and both Jim Standen and Geoff Hurst played Second X1 cricket for Essex? There are strong links between West Ham United FC and Essex CCC. Foster was in the England rounders team and he plays for Essex. Link established. Question, why have you wasted time moaning?
Test cricket is a fantastically nuanced game. I honestly don't see 20/20 attracting 'new fans' that Test or ODI cricket doesn't.
Having said that 20/20 does seem to fit in with the small bites of shallow commercialism that modern society seems to love so much.
If 20/20 is the future of cricket that will be the end of my interest in the game.
20/20 is fantastic entertainment... as a sport though, it's like playing 5-a-aside football on the beach with full size goals and no goalies or WWF or something.
It will kill the game Apache mate.
Anon 2014 Test cricket may be 'fantastically nuanced' but people don't want that anymore. You say 20/20 won't attract new fans, yet attendances are many times higher for 20/20 than test matches - this is even truer in places like Pakistan and India etc. Fanno it won't kill the game because its now at a length where people can come for a couple of hours after work and see a whole game. It doesn't take a working WEEK like a test or a even a whole day like a 50over game. Test cricket should have sorted its house out years ago, over rates are pathetic, the VFM of test cricket is very poor. Test cricket will continue to exist but only the real rival nations will play each other. England v Oz, Oz v NZ, India v Pakistan etc.
Den, 5 day cricket is cricket. Twenty20 is rounders. If Twenty20 takes hold, cricket is dead. Coronation Street was dumbed down by the Hollyoaks 20 seconds attention span philosophy. Now cricket is going the same way.
Test cricket, poor value for money? My ticket for a seat in the Members area on the Saturday of the Lords Ashes Test (the equivalent of an FA Cup Final) has cost me £55. That is for six hours cricket. It cost £50 for a grandstand ticket at Epsom yesterday. It costs £50 for some seats at UP and the ball is only in play for an average of 56 mins. Test cricket remains fantastic VFM. And I'm allowed to take gin and tonic and wine in with me because the spectators are treated like human beings!
without twenty20 cricket our county game would slowly fall into non-existance meaning no games to play and no practice for our international players. It is down to twenty20 the colossal rise in audiences and has influenced so many children, potential future stars, to take up the game. Twenty20 cricket is hire entertainment however i do believe that our main concern should be the up and coming ashes series
Sorry but test cricket is dead in its current 'everybody plays each other now and again' format. We are one of the only countries with any enthusiasm for it. My argument that VFM is poor in test cricket stands IMO. There is a huge amount of buggering about and a disregard for the spectator. The slow over rate is one. Sodding about for tea at 4pm when they've only been playing an hour after rain all morning is a typical example. Your 'six hours' can quickly become 'an hour' with no end of waiting about - no fun in the rain? The Ashes is totally different too, a special event that will ALWAYS exist due to the historical rivalry. However, five days of a rain-interrupted draw against Bangladesh holds no appeal for any but the hardiest cricket lovers. Premiership football can be poor VFM but you get a guaranteed amount of entertainment - they don't stop with no refund after 20mins cos its raining! I know 20/20 suffers the same with the rain but the reduced time to complete a match means you know what you are getting when you get your ticket. The people love it, the purists don't. I like cricket, I'm not a purist and I love 20/20.
You know me Den, I am a purist - thus my loathing of Curbishley's tactics!
Clearly a game of Test cricket will attract more fans simply because it's played over 5 days and as such has 5 times as many tickets to available.
Pakistan and India have been far more ODI orientated for a number of years now, so it's hardly surprising 20/20 is more popular there.
You can't spend a lazy summer days half a sleep watching a 20/20 game in bits and pieces. And you can't win the Ashes (which when all is said and done is the be all and end all of cricket) playing 20/20.
I hope 20/20 is a passing fad, but in a country where 1,000,000 half wits can vote for the BNP anything (bad) is possible.
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