Cricketers' Views on Twenty20

[Sanz]

This thread is for what Cricketers think about the Twenty20 version of the game. I will start it off NZ Captain's views :-

Vettori gives Twenty20 thumbs down

Cricinfo staff

September 18, 2007



Daniel Vettori: "I personally love the more traditional forms of the game" © Getty Images




While organisers and broadcasters purr over Twenty20, Daniel Vettori, New Zealand's captain, has given the tournament and the format a thumbs down.

"I hope Twenty20 cricket will only be part of the landscape and not the future of the game," Vettori said. "I personally love the more traditional forms of the game, that is Test cricket and one-day internationals. But I suppose we guys have to take this game seriously too."

He went on to explain that captaining in matches was a hard ask. "It is not easy ... because you don't know what you will run into. You might have the best of plans but they may all have to be discarded at the spur of the moment.

"You have to be really thinking on your feet. There is very little time to take decisions with so much happening and it is not as if you have all the time in the world to formulate plans.

"The more wickets you take, better the chance for you to peg back the opposition. A couple of sixes and you will suddenly run out of ideas. So, it always helps if you are able to bag some wickets."

http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/twenty20wc/content/current/story/311446.html

 

[jammay123]

we all know ponting isnt too fond of it.

 

[TT Boy]

Are you going to include the opinions of cricketers who actually enjoy this format, I.e. the majority. Or is this just selected bull****?

 

[Sanz]

Are you going to include the opinions of cricketers who actually enjoy this format, I.e. the majority. Or is this just selected bull****?

Definately. If you find someone saying positive about it, please feel free to post it here.

 

[TT Boy]

Definately. If you find someone saying positive about it, please feel free to post it here.

I will...

 

[SJS]

KEVIN PIETERSEN

"Twenty20 is different to 50-overs cricket. It is a lottery. It's a fascinating game, but I'm not too sure that you can ever prepare 100% for it. I think it is hit and miss - big time."

Against Zimbabwe, he was out to his fourth reverse sweep and shrugged that it was "a silly shot in a silly game."

In Twenty20, Pietersen sees no cause for excessive analysis. Those holding doctrinaire principles will be resisted as long as possible, and told to save them for the longer forms of the game. This is a format where he will insist that no-one has the right to condemn him even if he attempts to chip the ball over the wicketkeeper while standing on his head. And, armed with that philosophy, he will doubtless play with such élan that he will be more successful than most.​

Source : Guardian 18th Sept 2007​

 

[SJS]

MARK NICHOLAS

Convincing as Twenty20 cricket has become, it would be dangerous for the game at large to lose sight of the attraction and advantages that are still clear in 50-over cricket. It was once unimaginable to say it but the options, subtleties and basic requirements of technique and tenacity in the 50-over format seem rather appealing. The players have to make choices and we see more of their character because of this.

They dictate the play more than is possible in Twenty20, which basically does the dictating itself because it is so short. The sooner that 50-over cricket is put on an elite pedestal, with a shorter, more meaningful World Cup as its showpiece, the sooner Twenty20 can become the game's sole vehicle for unconditional globalisation.

Twenty20 is exciting because it is condensed. It is the natural heir to the 40-over cricket that quickly established itself in the late Sixties as the "new black" – hip, fast, accessible and satisfying. Previously unseen audiences were as seduced then as they are now. Forty years on, it is obvious to everyone except the people who run the game in England day-to-day, that the 40-over format is a white elephant. In fact, it is more dangerous than that. It is an energy sapper, an injury-sucker and a diversion from the accepted formats that are played everywhere else in the world.

And all for a few bob more. By heaven, how money plays havoc with the thinking of those in power. One day, when many have passed on and the rest are in slippers, it will be crystal clear that English cricket suffered at the hands of greed. For now, we go blindly on, pursuing everything and anything at the expense of our best players – by that I mean that Andrew Flintoff is physically knackered and Kevin Pietersen mentally knackered – at a time when the national team have an opportunity to be rather good.​

Source : The Telegraph​

 

[SJS]

MICHAEL ATHERTON​

Fifty and 40-over cricket have already felt the pinch - they become even less attractive to sponsors now - and this will be exaggerated. County staffs may well be positioned with Twenty20 primarily in mind. Star players may be rested from first-class games in order to be fit and ready for the Twenty20 tournament. Suddenly Twenty20 starts to look like a threat to the primacy of the championship. Will a county be more interested in producing Test players for England, or winning a share of a $5 million pot? It doesn't take much of a clairvoyant to see the potential threat to the traditional forms of the game.

As an enthusiastic supporter of Twenty20 from its inception, the success it has generated in such a short time in revitalising domestic cricket has been heartening. But I have always felt that Twenty20 should have remained just that - a vehicle to revive domestic cricket. Fifty-over cricket and obviously Test cricket, remain vital to protecting the very essence of the game, which is a contest between batsmen and bowlers, bat and ball. Twenty20 is the equivalent of the gas chamber for a bowler. If the game's future evolves entirely around Twenty20, why would any young, talented cricketer want to become one?

The recently disgraced Shoaib Akhtar might have overstated his case when he slammed the game's administrators for making it into a batsman's game, but he had a point.

Now that Twenty20 has spread to the international arena, its effects could be more wide ranging than either I, or, I suspect, its creators would wish. It is hard to see a future for 50-over cricket and if, as I do, you still love the slower rhythm and sub-plots of Test cricket, you might fear for that, too.​

 

[Langeveldt]

MICHAEL ATHERTON​

Fifty and 40-over cricket have already felt the pinch - they become even less attractive to sponsors now - and this will be exaggerated. County staffs may well be positioned with Twenty20 primarily in mind. Star players may be rested from first-class games in order to be fit and ready for the Twenty20 tournament. Suddenly Twenty20 starts to look like a threat to the primacy of the championship. Will a county be more interested in producing Test players for England, or winning a share of a $5 million pot? It doesn't take much of a clairvoyant to see the potential threat to the traditional forms of the game.

As an enthusiastic supporter of Twenty20 from its inception, the success it has generated in such a short time in revitalising domestic cricket has been heartening. But I have always felt that Twenty20 should have remained just that - a vehicle to revive domestic cricket. Fifty-over cricket and obviously Test cricket, remain vital to protecting the very essence of the game, which is a contest between batsmen and bowlers, bat and ball. Twenty20 is the equivalent of the gas chamber for a bowler. If the game's future evolves entirely around Twenty20, why would any young, talented cricketer want to become one?

The recently disgraced Shoaib Akhtar might have overstated his case when he slammed the game's administrators for making it into a batsman's game, but he had a point.

Now that Twenty20 has spread to the international arena, its effects could be more wide ranging than either I, or, I suspect, its creators would wish. It is hard to see a future for 50-over cricket and if, as I do, you still love the slower rhythm and sub-plots of Test cricket, you might fear for that, too.​

Completely agree with him, what a guy

 

[Athlai]

Same here.

 

[SJS]

DARREN MADDY

"Probably the reason I've had so much success in Twenty20 is because of the lack of thought that's gone into it," said Maddy. "I just watch the ball and try to hit it."

 

[SJS]

ANDREW STRAUSS

Despite initial scepticism, Andrew Strauss found that his batting improved as a result of Twenty20 Cup cricket for Middlesex last year. “It was fast and frantic, and to transfer it to international level will just raise the interest,” he said. “I think it is here to stay with Tests and one-day internationals as we know them. There is room for all three.”

​

​

​

​

Source : The Times June 2004​

 

[Scaly piscine]

Atherton talking his usual utter bollocks. Twenty20 games are more of a contest between bat and ball than ODIs are. The standard ODI road gives virtually no chance to bowlers of bowling someone out, particularly as the ball gets older. If the batsmen bat well you've got practically no chance of bowling him out.

In Twenty20 the batsmen have to score early in their innings, they have to take risks, they have to attack every bowler to some extent. The ball is new most of the innings so you can do something with it, the bowler always has a chance because of all these factors. See the impact good and bad bowling has on a game in Twenty20, then compare it to the impact it has on a typical ODI road.


As for KP he got out to another reverse sweep against NZ, but then he is an idiot - not learned anything from what happened to Australia against Zimbabwe.

 

[SJS]

GREG CHAPPELL

Former Test captain and the previous Indian coach Greg Chappell has been watching the lantana-like spread of Twenty20 with some concern.

He says that while he is happy with the new game being played as a fundraiser at the domestic level, he is concerned that it might affect the focus of our most important breeding grounds for Test players -- the states.

Chappell points out that the one-day game has so distracted most of the other cricketing nations that they have fallen away in the five-day game.

He worries that the simplistic Twenty20 form could do further damage.

For a start, he finds the form is naive and needs development. "It's got limitations as a form, it is very one-dimensional," Chappell says. "It's certainly not the panacea for our ills as some consider it."

Chappell says the Twenty20 game lacks depth, that there is no penalty for losing wickets as it's hard to be bowled out and there is little fielding involved as the ball generally sails off into the crowd.

"At this stage it is just about who can hit the ball the furthest and that is not enough to sustain interest," he says.

Chappell says that Australia has stayed strong at Test cricket because it has understood the value of the four-day game at state level, but if the states are distracted by money on offer for Twenty20, the Test team will suffer.

"I think the idea of generating more money for domestic cricket is fantastic," he says.

"However the disparity between the potential to win $2m playing Twenty20 and what you get to win the Pura Cup is going to affect the way people think about the game. "It will affect programming and so on and it needs to be cleverly thought through.

"The four-day game is a very important part of the development process in cricket and that needs to be understood and it needs to be protected as much as possible"
​

​

Source : The Australian​

 

[SJS]

KIM HUGHES

"Lets face it, if you've got the chance to win $128,000 compared with the chance to win $2m, then there's no choice about what you do from a business point of view," Hughes says.

"I am of a strong view Twenty20 should be left at a state level or a county level, but I don't see any benefit of it for our national team."

Like Chappell, Hughes believes the prizemoney and concentration on Twenty20 could add to the decline of Test skills. "We've seen the deterioration in standard in Test cricket (because of the one-day game)," he says. "Apart from Australia, there is probably only one other side interested in playing at the top level.

"The other nations are happy concentrating on the one-day game and it's their loss.

"One-day cricket is a sheltered game where you get flat wickets, the batsmen are protected, the bowlers can't bowl bouncers and ordinary blokes start to look pretty good.

"Look at the standard of Test cricket in the West Indies -- they are pathetic. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are no good. England has fallen off the pace, India and Pakistan are ordinary.

"Players who can play good Test cricket can play all the other forms, but there are plenty who can play one-day games but they're not within a bull's roar of being Test cricketers. You need to get your priorities right and most nations don't."​

 

[SJS]

PETER ROEBUCK

Peter Roebuck
September 8, 2007
Sydney Morning Herald​

NO ONE in their right mind is going to take the forthcoming 20-overs extravaganza seriously. Fortunately, few sports followers show much sign of sanity. Apparently, some people go to bed miserable when their team loses.

Anything less suited to solemnity than the sight of highly skilled cricketers whacking a ball about for 20 overs it is hard to imagine. Blink and it will be over. It is as far from Test cricket as were the antics of Ken Dodd from the grave pronunciations of Sir Laurence Olivier. Mr Dodd was a Liverpudlian comedian who took to the stage carrying a featherduster and with hair erupting from his scalp. When his thoughts turned to song he was generally accompanied by The Diddymen. Sir Laurence was otherwise inclined.

Still, it has been described as a World Cup, and the players will consider it worth winning. Already this form of the game has taken hold in England, as cricket tried to turn back the rising tide of football. England has been the author of most of the game's drearier strategies and most of its attempts at resuscitation.

After a fortnight of crash, bang and wallop, the tournament will produce its first champion. The 50-overs World Cup seemed interminable. Three matches are to be played most nights in three different cities, and television will cover the lot. Scores will rattle along, boundaries will be short, and the crowds will be agog. It is an odd game, cricket. The shorter it goes the more people like it.

Doubtless the best team will prevail. A five-over match could be arranged and still the strongest would find a way to set themselves apart. Obviously, the minnows will be walloped. Scotland, Kenya and the Peter Chingoka XI (as Zimbabwe ought to be called) lack the firepower needed. Among the rest, South Africa has been disturbed by the sort of internal rumblings usually reserved for a cowboy picnic, the Pakistanis are at loggerheads (I have not actually checked, but it is generally the case) and Bangladesh lack exposure. Despite their showing in the Caribbean, the Sri Lankans may not be incisive enough with bat or ball.

Everyone else has a chance, even the West Indies and India. As far as the Windies are concerned, anything is possible if Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul click. Admittedly, that sentence has been written a hundred times this past few years. Having omitted their ageing champions, the Indians will be fleeter of foot but might lack punch with the bat.

And as for England's cosmopolitan collection, no nation has played half as much Twenty20 cricket as them. Australia's preparations have been affected by injury and Ricky Ponting's delayed departure. Apparently, Shane Watson has tweaked a muscle, Shaun Tait will be missed and Stuart Clark has only just arrived.

In short, they are vulnerable. Not that any team containing Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist can be discounted. Who will prevail? When in doubt, back the workers and the Australians! What will it mean? Cricket will have three champion sides. But, like boxing, we all know it is the heavyweight division that really counts.​

 

[SJS]

James Lawton: Twenty20 slogging may give us a vision of the future, but it certainly isn't cricket​

18th September 2007
The Independent​

If ever you get into a debate about the sheer soul-numbing degradation of cricket that is currently being enacted under the pjyama-clad guise of World Twenty20, you might care to submit Exhibit A.

It is a paragraph composed with splendid economy by a wire reporter in his account of Sri Lanka's massacre of Kenya in Johannesburg.

Having described the ravaging of Kenya's bowlers by such as Mahela Jayawardene and Sanath Jayasuriya, he wrote: "They were outdone by Jehan Mubarak, who hit five sixes and three fours to reach 46 from a dozen balls. One more boundary would have broken Mohammad Ashraful's record for the fastest half-century, but he missed the final delivery of the innings completely."

Here, I believe, we have an impeccably accurate record of facts made utterly banal by their context.

Twenty20 is not cricket. It does not have growth, that sublime building of skill and concentration and timing which makes the Test game so ultimately intriguing – nor much of the declining, but sometimes still visible, fundamental qualities of the game which are offered down the food chain until, as in the crudest making of an omelette, the eggs are smashed in the version which is now having imposed upon it, in another money-grubbing lunge, the dignity of a world title.

In the process, cricket uses up its prime talent with the profligacy of a doomed punter chasing from one casino to another.

Sure, cricket is picking up a new audience with its catch-penny offerings, but maybe it should reflect on the fact that you can squeeze the cantaloupe only until the pips start squeaking. Novelties are fine, but then that's what they are: short-lived and best found not in a sport which has a great tradition, and no doubt a challenge to compete in the modern cornucopia of televised sport, but in some trinket shop at the end of a pier.

The point about the pummelling performance of Mubarak is that it ended in a stroke which would have brought sniggers on the average village green – and posed the question, how many times can you roar and gasp before subsiding into a shrug? I was once chastised on a TV show by Britain's top boxing promoter, Frank Warren, for a failure of enthusiasm for the way Prince Naseem Hamed was being promoted. Dry ice, jiggling entrances and dances over the prone figures of grossly inadequate opponents, might not gladden the hearts of the old fight crowd, but we all had to remember that boxing was looking for a new audience.

Yet we know that if boxing tomorrow produced a fight of genuine competition by two outstanding masters of their trade the world would be instantly fascinated. It remains as the great Muhammad Ali once said: "The whole world wants to know: who's gonna win, who's gonna win?"

The dry ice and the stagey entrances didn't do Hamed, or boxing, much good, when he was finally ordered into the ring – by his American TV paymasters – against an opponent who was equipped to administer some of the old game's verities. Marco Antonio Barrera proved that the best of any sport doesn't have to be sold, but merely presented.

The latest drama from Twenty20 is that England's Kevin Pietersen and South Africa's Shaun Pollock were involved in a sensational run-out controversy.

Sensational? What is really sensational in a game built on the allure of a blacksmith's slog?

Certainly, it is not the kind of slow-building drama that made cricket the compulsion of most sports lovers in this country deep into the start of a new Premiership season two years ago, when the Ashes were finally, and so tragically briefly, won back. Or the thunderous glory of the Ian Botham slog that emerged from within the disciplined limits of an unforgettable Ashes Test match at Headingley. Or the sublime Garfield Sobers smiting Malcolm Nash for six sixes in an over. That last feat was a diamond which, when we saw it, we knew would glitter for ever. In Twenty20 it would probably have brought on not much more than a bout of flatulence.

Streamline cricket by all means. Emphasise its allure. But do not destroy its fundamental quality. Do not heap upon us this trashy version which would have made Don Bradman and Denis Compton squirm, which insults all that is best about the game which we know can still, in its highest form, bring whole nations to the edges of their seats.

Where Twenty20 brings us is to that novelty shop with the funny masks – and the stink bombs.​

 

[SJS]

Action galore, but a game without soul
Peter Roebuck
September 8, 2007
Sydney Morning Herald​

NO ONE in their right mind is going to take the forthcoming 20-overs extravaganza seriously. Fortunately, few sports followers show much sign of sanity. Apparently, some people go to bed miserable when their team loses.

Anything less suited to solemnity than the sight of highly skilled cricketers whacking a ball about for 20 overs it is hard to imagine. Blink and it will be over. It is as far from Test cricket as were the antics of Ken Dodd from the grave pronunciations of Sir Laurence Olivier. Mr Dodd was a Liverpudlian comedian who took to the stage carrying a featherduster and with hair erupting from his scalp. When his thoughts turned to song he was generally accompanied by The Diddymen. Sir Laurence was otherwise inclined.

Still, it has been described as a World Cup, and the players will consider it worth winning. Already this form of the game has taken hold in England, as cricket tried to turn back the rising tide of football. England has been the author of most of the game's drearier strategies and most of its attempts at resuscitation.

After a fortnight of crash, bang and wallop, the tournament will produce its first champion. The 50-overs World Cup seemed interminable. Three matches are to be played most nights in three different cities, and television will cover the lot. Scores will rattle along, boundaries will be short, and the crowds will be agog. It is an odd game, cricket. The shorter it goes the more people like it.

Doubtless the best team will prevail. A five-over match could be arranged and still the strongest would find a way to set themselves apart. Obviously, the minnows will be walloped. Scotland, Kenya and the Peter Chingoka XI (as Zimbabwe ought to be called) lack the firepower needed. Among the rest, South Africa has been disturbed by the sort of internal rumblings usually reserved for a cowboy picnic, the Pakistanis are at loggerheads (I have not actually checked, but it is generally the case) and Bangladesh lack exposure. Despite their showing in the Caribbean, the Sri Lankans may not be incisive enough with bat or ball.

Everyone else has a chance, even the West Indies and India. As far as the Windies are concerned, anything is possible if Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul click. Admittedly, that sentence has been written a hundred times this past few years. Having omitted their ageing champions, the Indians will be fleeter of foot but might lack punch with the bat.

And as for England's cosmopolitan collection, no nation has played half as much Twenty20 cricket as them. Australia's preparations have been affected by injury and Ricky Ponting's delayed departure. Apparently, Shane Watson has tweaked a muscle, Shaun Tait will be missed and Stuart Clark has only just arrived.

In short, they are vulnerable. Not that any team containing Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist can be discounted. Who will prevail? When in doubt, back the workers and the Australians! What will it mean? Cricket will have three champion sides. But, like boxing, we all know it is the heavyweight division that really counts.​

 

[The Sean]

James Lawton: Twenty20 slogging may give us a vision of the future, but it certainly isn't cricket​

18th September 2007
The Independent​

If ever you get into a debate about the sheer soul-numbing degradation of cricket that is currently being enacted under the pjyama-clad guise of World Twenty20, you might care to submit Exhibit A.

It is a paragraph composed with splendid economy by a wire reporter in his account of Sri Lanka's massacre of Kenya in Johannesburg.

Having described the ravaging of Kenya's bowlers by such as Mahela Jayawardene and Sanath Jayasuriya, he wrote: "They were outdone by Jehan Mubarak, who hit five sixes and three fours to reach 46 from a dozen balls. One more boundary would have broken Mohammad Ashraful's record for the fastest half-century, but he missed the final delivery of the innings completely."

Here, I believe, we have an impeccably accurate record of facts made utterly banal by their context.

Twenty20 is not cricket. It does not have growth, that sublime building of skill and concentration and timing which makes the Test game so ultimately intriguing – nor much of the declining, but sometimes still visible, fundamental qualities of the game which are offered down the food chain until, as in the crudest making of an omelette, the eggs are smashed in the version which is now having imposed upon it, in another money-grubbing lunge, the dignity of a world title.

In the process, cricket uses up its prime talent with the profligacy of a doomed punter chasing from one casino to another.

Sure, cricket is picking up a new audience with its catch-penny offerings, but maybe it should reflect on the fact that you can squeeze the cantaloupe only until the pips start squeaking. Novelties are fine, but then that's what they are: short-lived and best found not in a sport which has a great tradition, and no doubt a challenge to compete in the modern cornucopia of televised sport, but in some trinket shop at the end of a pier.

The point about the pummelling performance of Mubarak is that it ended in a stroke which would have brought sniggers on the average village green – and posed the question, how many times can you roar and gasp before subsiding into a shrug? I was once chastised on a TV show by Britain's top boxing promoter, Frank Warren, for a failure of enthusiasm for the way Prince Naseem Hamed was being promoted. Dry ice, jiggling entrances and dances over the prone figures of grossly inadequate opponents, might not gladden the hearts of the old fight crowd, but we all had to remember that boxing was looking for a new audience.

Yet we know that if boxing tomorrow produced a fight of genuine competition by two outstanding masters of their trade the world would be instantly fascinated. It remains as the great Muhammad Ali once said: "The whole world wants to know: who's gonna win, who's gonna win?"

The dry ice and the stagey entrances didn't do Hamed, or boxing, much good, when he was finally ordered into the ring – by his American TV paymasters – against an opponent who was equipped to administer some of the old game's verities. Marco Antonio Barrera proved that the best of any sport doesn't have to be sold, but merely presented.

The latest drama from Twenty20 is that England's Kevin Pietersen and South Africa's Shaun Pollock were involved in a sensational run-out controversy.

Sensational? What is really sensational in a game built on the allure of a blacksmith's slog?

Certainly, it is not the kind of slow-building drama that made cricket the compulsion of most sports lovers in this country deep into the start of a new Premiership season two years ago, when the Ashes were finally, and so tragically briefly, won back. Or the thunderous glory of the Ian Botham slog that emerged from within the disciplined limits of an unforgettable Ashes Test match at Headingley. Or the sublime Garfield Sobers smiting Malcolm Nash for six sixes in an over. That last feat was a diamond which, when we saw it, we knew would glitter for ever. In Twenty20 it would probably have brought on not much more than a bout of flatulence.

Streamline cricket by all means. Emphasise its allure. But do not destroy its fundamental quality. Do not heap upon us this trashy version which would have made Don Bradman and Denis Compton squirm, which insults all that is best about the game which we know can still, in its highest form, bring whole nations to the edges of their seats.

Where Twenty20 brings us is to that novelty shop with the funny masks – and the stink bombs.​

 

[SJS]

Scyld Berry
Sunday Telegraph​

Excerpts :

Twenty-over cricket is going international for three reasons. One is that everybody wants to cash in. Secondly, the timescale is ideal: a three-hour match can be fitted into a working day, whereas a day of Test or 50-over cricket cannot. Thirdly, the shorter the game, the more likely a close result.

In the last World Cup, lasting two almost interminable months, only three games went to the final over - and a close finish, along with star players, is what spectators and TV audiences want to see. In Twenty20 internationals (and only 19 of them have been played so far) there has already been one tie and two victories by two runs.​