T20 cricket sucks. It’s cricket dumbed down. Americanised. Pandering to the Average Joe sport fan with a shorter attention span than a deranged fruit fly. It’s simply not cricket.
Cricket is supposed to be quiet. Cricket is supposed to be dignified. Cricket is supposed to be slow. Cricket is supposed to be savoured over a prolonged period of time like a bottle of silky smooth Scotch whiskey carefully selected from the top shelf. And, most importantly of all, cricket is supposed to be boring to stupid people – it’s how we keep the riffraff out.
And yet, here I am, riffraff, attending T20 cricket.
As a teenager I could while away four straight days at a Plunket Shield clash, or five at a test, without any issues whatsoever. It’s easy when you have your whole life ahead of you. But now I’m 45, my life is half over at best, and I’ve got important stuff I gotta do! Like save up for my nursing care.
I’ve done the maths. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ve got 14,000 days left on this planet. One five day test is 0.04% of that time. Don’t scoff! That’s a lot! It would only take 14 test matches to chew up half of one percent of the rest of my life!! How can I justify that? I can’t.
So I have to consume my cricket in appropriately middle-aged sized bites, which means T20s and/or two hour chunks of longer forms of the game. And so if I want to watch an entire game from the first ball to the last, there’s only one choice. Be the riffraff.
It’s still a struggle though. More charging than the Light Brigade. More playing across the line than a toddler’s colouring book. More sweeping than there is in curling. More pulling than John Key in a Parnell cafe. This is not how cricket should be played.
Cricket is a game of elegance. Finesse. It’s mostly played with a straight bat. Mostly on the off-side. Cuts, cover drives and off drives are the run-scoring shots I want to see. I want the ball rolling along the ground. I want fielders surrounding the bat. I want chess, not checkers. Fine dining, not fast food. The book, not the film adaptation. The art gallery not the video arcade. King Lear not Tiger King.
That’s not to say T20 is without virtue. It isn’t. Apart from the modest time commitment, there’s also the way it provides curmudgeons like me the perfect environment to be ourselves. We can shake our heads at all the improvised strokeplay. Tut-tut at the unorthodox field placements. Roll our eyes at spinners opening the bowling. Throw our arms skyward in despair as yet another batsman is caught on the boundary. And mutter under our breath that it wasn’t like this in our day.
Never mind that it’s a lovely cool and sunny weekday afternoon, and there are former Blackcaps like Martin Guptill and Tarun Nethula playing quality club cricket right before our very eyes in a relaxed suburban setting. That’s not why I’m here.
I’m here because T20 cricket sucks.
Suburbs New Lynn 185/7 (Martin Guptill 101), Kumeu 78 all out in reply
The Fox and the Crow 