Twenty 20 Cricket World Cup in full swing

The inaugural ICC Twenty20 Cricket World tournament started in South on September 11th and will continue until the 24th. The games are being played in Newlands in Cape Town, Kingsmead in Durban and Wanderers in Johannesburg, all of them grounds with a long-standing connection to cricket. There will be 9 games at each venue. There are 12 participating countries and they have been divided into four groups: Group A has South Africa, West Indies and Bangladesh; Group B has Australia, England and Zimbabwe; Group C has New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Kenya; Group D has Pakistan, India and Scotland. All teams are playing in a round-robin format. Scotland and Kenya qualified to join the tournament by reaching the final of the 2007 WCL Division One tournament.

Some say that staging the Twenty20 World Cup just five months after the ODI World Cup ended is rushing things too much, and indeed some familiar faces are absent from these games. South Africa decided against selected its best individual batsman, Jacques Kallis, and Pakistan did the same with Mohammad Yousuf. Perhaps they were not suited to the high-speed nature of Twenty20 cricket, or their clubs wanted to keep them fresh for the upcoming season. В‘RestingВ’ was also the reason given by India for not fielding Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. There is a feeling, perhaps that some nations do not regard Twenty20 cricket seriously enough to make a full commitment to it.

That may be, but the viewing public is giving their vote of approval. They like the fact that a game is completed in about three hours, with each innings lasting around 75 minutes. This brings cricket much closer to the timespan of other sports like soccer, which provide full entertainment within one evening. Twenty20 matches allow cricket to become more dynamic and for both spectators at the ground and viewers on television. Both teams have a single innings and bat for a maximum of 20 overs. This innovation has proved to be very successful.

This form of cricket match was first introduced in the UK for professional inter-county competition by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003. The ECB sees Twenty20 as complimenting, rather than replacing, other national and international cricket matches.