When it comes to cricket, Indians show a different kind of determination. And every ground in which team India is playing and their support is the perfect representation of what we just said. Today, let us broaden our experience and understand more about cricket. Many of the experts believe that T20 cricket is killing the real cricketing skills. We understand if you do not believe in it, but it sure does offer some valid points that we are going to discuss in this blog.
There is no denying the fact that T20 is currently the most popular format of the game as audiences and players both prefer it for many reasons. T20 is growing exponentially, and almost every cricket-playing nation has its own T20 league. But T20 cricket has changed the way the game is played. T20 might have given us many amazing players, but it doesn’t justify the ethic it breaks now and then. Let us talk about why we believe that T20 is killing real cricket.
1. Disturbs the Ethics of the Game
Too much money and glamor must indeed stay away from sports. If you follow Football, you know how much adversity money can bring in the player’s lives. We have already seen many cases of spot-fixing in almost every league. But our main cause of concern is not limited to spot-fixing. We also want to emphasize the point that players do not want to play any other format of cricket because of the amount of money they are earning from playing in T20 Leagues. The whole West Indian cricket team is the prime example of this concern.
Most young players are not interested or care in donning the international team’s jersey as many of them are already millionaires by playing these various leagues. It’s true that players need to be paid as per their talent, but it’s impacting their mental health in various ways.
First, the players prefer to play for teams that offer the most money, and that’s the only reason KL Rahul refused to get retained by Punjab Kings. This hampers their ability to make the right decisions as no matter what, they need to play all the matches and make runs tirelessly because they suffer at the international level.
Secondly, T20 cricket means handling pressure and temperament in the short term, and it means the chances of playing at the highest level in test and ODI formats becomes low.
2. Calendar Gets Packed
T20 leagues and format are like a carnival for the fans, but mostly for cricketing boards. Each board plans to have its own league when no other nation’s league is at life at that moment. It allows them to attract bigger names to their leagues, which means more sponsors, views, and money. It’s made to be a silver lining for the boards, but it’s hard work and a tiring schedule for the players.
The two biggest cricket leagues IPL and BBL, run for about two months. That means all the top players continuously play without a break, which puts a lot of pressure on their bodies.
As soon as Rahul Dravid was appointed the head coach of the Indian cricket team, he emphasized that load management and mental stress must also be taken into consideration by the respective boards for the well-being of their players. Giving players the highest level of commodities won’t reduce the pressure from players’ heads as it will lead to more injuries and less interest in the game.
If you have also played for your school at any level, you know how much fatigues you feel after studying and playing a league match on the same day. Even the viewers often feel fatigued by constantly watching cricket, and imagine how much players have to keep up because of these T20 leagues.
3. Killing Other Forms of Cricket
We are not against the rise of T20 cricket, but because of popularity and added glamor, it is clearly killing the other forms of cricket, especially the test format. Many former and current cricketers and hardcore fans believe that test cricket is the “REAL CRICKET” or the highest form of cricket. But as mentioned earlier, players are not interested in playing test cricket anymore because of T20. We know that it requires more stamina, strength, temperament to be a successful test cricketer but seeing players quitting test form of cricket to play T20 leagues is really disheartening.
T20 leagues were introduced to boost players’ performance in International ODI and tests, but we observed quite the opposite as players quit test format to play in T20 leagues.
Probably that’s the reason why Mark Boucher led the South Africa Board didn’t allow AB De Villiers to make a comeback to its national team. Maybe their point was you left us when we needed you the most. Many players like MS Dhoni, Chris Gayle, Sahid Afridi retired from the test to focus on T20 matches and leagues. Captain Cool even gave up test captaincy as he felt too much pressure in handling the team in all three formats, which is unjust to cricket, for we all know what the man is capable of. This only means every nation suffers from losing talented senior players from the test format.
Even if we talk about cricketing skills, then patient batting, reverse swing, pitch conditions, step-by-step play, ingenious strategies, etc., all are missing from T20 cricket because of which a low number of quality test players are coming through.
Endnotes
Today, most millennials believe that the T20 format and leagues have taken over the older concept of cricket. If the steps are not taken at the right time, we will witness less international cricket and more such leagues in the future because of money.
If we particularly talk about India, then IPL alone is enough to take all the spotlight and overshadow other sports like hockey, kabaddi, etc.
Even IPL’s team selection is questioned from time to time because it was introduced to give youngsters a chance and the current form of players, yet retired cricketers have long-term contracts with their respective teams, which does raise doubts on its policies.