20/20 fading appeal???

There were already signs of a decline last year. The IPL has been successful by attracting the best talent and concentrating it in a few teams. By contrast, in county Twenty20, the handful of stars are spread more thinly and the novelty of the format is wearing off.

I think the ECB could have prolonged interest by shaking it up a little, perhaps going with a franchise system based around a handful of cities and trying to attract more of the top internationals. But that would have meant cutting some or indeed all of the counties out and in the cosy world of English cricket, that would never do. Instead, next year we have not one but two bloated Twenty20 tournaments, both of them involving all eighteen counties. Overkill at precisely the moment when interest in Twenty20 domestically has peaked.

I agree about some of the absurd assumptions being made about its future. Those who have stated that it will overtake football globally are away with the fairies. Indeed, the signs are that English Premier League football could eventually become more popular than cricket in India itself.

I find the games dull because, just like five a side football and rugby sevens, most of the skills that make up the game are irrelevant in this variant.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the games were compressed into a short period, but the 20/20 World Cup drags on for more than two weeks and the county games will still be going on at the end of June.

The idiot that scheduled all this knockabout stuff in the month before the Ashes should be taken out and shot.

Will England prepare for 2010 football World Cup by playing five a side on the beach for a month?

Does Tiger Woods spend a month playing pitch and putt before the Masters.

Will Nadal be putting in long hours at a ping pong table before Wimbledon.

Total madness ……

I look at Twenty20 as an entirely different game to Test cricket and enjoy it on its own terms. It lacks the depth of subtelty of Test cricket, but I enjoy the hype, the noise and the popcorn entertainment. It will give the five day game a bit of a kick up the arse but it won’t be the end of Test cricket.

The scheduling of our summer game is always a mess. As usual I have the fixture list from Wisden magazine cellotaped to my wall and though it is undoubtedly colourful, it looks as well thought out and organised as a Jackson Pollock.

I’m not sure that the excess of Twenty20 will affect our Ashes chances. Australia will be taking part in the same tournament and have only a couple of warm-up county games, in which they are likely to field more than eleven players. In 2005, there was a fifty over tournament before the main event.

We’re going to lose anyway.

Well I fancied Andrew Symonds at 40-1 so what do I know!

Gambhir is a good bet. You obviously want a player in a team that is likely to get to the final, so Steyn is obviously in that category.

Ishant looked good the other day, Malinga was deadly in the IPL but I’d probably prefer to side with a slower bowler, maybe Murali.

Steyn’s new hair cut makes him look less like Lee Harvey Oswald, I suppose.

We went on a works do to watch Somerset a couple years ago and everyone really enjoyed it (although most were pissed before we left the office and Jenni fell asleep and somehow we forgot about her and she was woken up by security when the ground was empty).

The only thing I can’t get on with about 20/20 is listening to it on the radio – it is so different to listening to a Test-Match – even Arlott would struggle painting a picture in the minds-eye.