The buzz is in the air and it would seem Twenty20 is cricket’s ticket to everything it could never achieve.
The Twenty20 version of the cricket game really catapulted the viewership in South Africa for cricket to new heights. In most countries around the world, cricket does not even feature in a football dominated world. The transformation has been as impacting as Twenty20 itself. Twenty20 went form being the cheese to lure fans to the game to becoming the vehicle traveling with which cricket hopes to achieve its ultimate dream, conquering the world.
The Olympics fever seems to have caught on and a few sportsmen (read cricketers) are perhaps feeling like second citizens (what a unique feeling that must be for the men who are the Gods of the sub continent). Hence, when Adam Gilchrist first let loose a wandering thought that perhaps cricket ought to look at Twenty20 as an opportunity to make its entry to the Olympics, it has caught on with everyone’s imagination. Put it this way- if Twenty20 makes the cut, cricket will have achieved what it never has even with an incredible format of Test cricket, the great exhibition of it was given in two matches simultaneously in Sri Lanka and in England.
What makes Twenty20 easier to bank is the fact that this version of the game actually takes up less time in living rooms, has the crucial fun factor associated with it and viewing the Twenty20 over a length of time as in the Indian Premier League has shown that perhaps cricket skills do stand a place and in that the sport may get the recognition it never has in a global context.
Often competing for space when it came to the world, cricket has largely been an eight-team sport and the decline even in centric countries has meant a significant drop in the intensity of competition. The perfect example has to be that of the West Indies where cricket has significantly lost out to the popularity of American sports such as basketball, baseball as well as the world appeal of football. The Twenty20 would then perhaps be a great uplift for the image of the sport in these regions as well as in others where youngsters are more taken in by the heroics that the Olympics represent and hasten cricket’s interests to be taken up more seriously than a weekend affair in the park to be truly counted amongst the world’s best. It will still have a long road to breach but the ticket may well speed up the ride.
There will not be an immediate cricket contest in the upcoming Beijing Olympics but if a serious proposal is presented and approved by 2013, Twenty20 could well become the face of cricket at Olympics 2020. Talk about number crunching; this one takes the cake.
And it could well take a pie out of the nations that have concentrated more on the more globally appealing sports. The idea for India and Pakistan to feature alongside say, USA, Iraq, China, Afghanistan and be counted amongst Brazil and Argentina! The entertainment factor reached a new high, purely on the thought.
For the moment though, cricket can only dream!