T20: Plebian Cricket

Tishani Doshi has finally said what all those hacks at cricinfo consider heresy. That Twenty20 is a good thing and it is inevitably more entertaining than Test cricket. Dont get me wrong, I love reading Gideon Haigh and Ramachandra Guha for their diligent chronicling of the game. But most intellecutalls see T20 as a dumbing down of the game. This is hardly the case. At 3.5 hrs T20 is still longer than the Football and Basketball matches. If tons of evaluation can be done on each of these games (inspite of their percieved short timeframe and low quality), then cricket can be far richer and complicated.

In many ways cricket (atleast in its early days) was a game for the anglophiles. This anglophile nature tells us Lords is the home of cricket, Neville Cardus was the greatest cricket writer, W.G.Grace was the greatest batsman (after Bradman).

I for one dont mind the democratisation/plebinisation of cricket. Its just difficult to skip office to watch Dravid gracefully "leave" a ball from Dale Steyn. While it is good to read about the metaphysical interpertations cricket, a few wham-bang sixes dont hurt.