Twenty20 vision
Popular format could monopolise the game: Buttler
You could be forgiven for thinking cricket’s already gone down the one-format route, with the Black Caps amid an unprecedented run of Twenty20 internationals.
Stand-in England skipper Jos Buttler, a power-hitting poster boy for T20, believes that day may not be as far away as people think.
‘‘I feel cricket could become a one-format game in the future whether that’s soon or in 15 to 20 years,’’ Buttler told Sky Sports in the UK.
‘‘Test cricket is still, for me, the pinnacle of cricket but T20 fills out stadiums and is easy to keep up with and follow. Everyone wants things faster these days and things evolve so maybe Twenty20 could have a monopoly on cricket.’’
That’s inevitable for some, and a terrifying thought for other cricket fans.
Buttler said it would be sad if test cricket – ‘‘a complete test of everything’’ – disappeared but the strength of T20 can’t be ignored. It’s a bonanza for Buttler and other high-profile players: his hefty retainer and match fees from with England are topped up by one-off T20 league contracts and he fetched a price of $945,000 at the Indian Premier League auction from Rajasthan Royals.
New Zealand Cricket is gripped by T20, too, scheduling 10 T20 internationals this home summer including a tri-series final in Auckland next Wednesday. England and the Black Caps are already in a race to join Australia in the decider, and for a quick boost to NZC’s balance sheet it makes perfect sense squeezing all it can out of the most popular format against two crowd-pulling rivals.
But with limited context, T20 internationals can fast become too much of a good thing, each match easily forgotten as teams move onto the next destination.
England’s tour gets serious with a five-match ODI series and just two tests to end the summer. That balance seems skewed, too, and a three-three split, as happened with South Africa a year ago, would be more palatable for cricket purists. Two-test series (and just four home tests per New Zealand summer) will become the norm for countries outside the Big Three as the International Cricket Council adopts the test championship from 2019.
NZC chief executive David White said last August: ‘‘The challenge is, international broadcasters are telling us that the value of test cricket is diminishing. When I started in this job five years ago, if you gave a test match a three, an ODI a two and had T20 a distant third; it’s almost reversed now.
‘‘If you look at the broadcast values of ICC events, World Cup and World T20, they’re growing exponentially and IPL and T20 leagues the values are growing significantly.
‘‘What we’re finding is test
match cricket is flat at best and diminishing. The key to its future is providing it with context so people can follow it and it’s meaningful from a consumer’s point of view. We’ve always got to look at it from a fan’s viewpoint because they’re ultimately the people who fund it.’’
New Zealand captain Kane Williamson, like most of his teammates, covets test cricket above all other formats but in the same breath is on the T20 bandwagon.
He sold for $640,000 to Sunrisers Hyderabad at the IPL auction and on Monday insisted he wanted to continue playing T20 internationals, even if the demands on a captain in all three formats appear tougher by the year.
‘‘I definitely want to play all three forms, without a doubt. It’s a challenge I look forward to,’’ Williamson said.
Whilst it was a balancing act, trying to keep body and mind fresh, Williamson felt it could be achieved. ‘‘T20 cricket is prevalent in the domestic and international game and you play a lot more of it nowadays and it’s something that you want to be a part of.’’