The reality – and this may have been the franchise promoters’ intentions – is that T20 now is actually more than a cricket match; it has become an event in society where cricket is certainly the central plank but there are other pieces widening the appeal

You still see the elegant cover drive, and the delicate snick through the slips, and the spinners turning the ball, and the diving catches. The rules are the same. The difference, if you step away and look at it, is really in the stands. Up there, everything is different; everything is cranked up. Of course a carnival costume, has nothing to with cricket, in the same way that the sexy cheerleaders in the NFL have nothing to do with the game of American football, but carnival has to do with colour and artistry and powerful Caribbean culture, so it’s there in the stands at the Caribbean T20, and the notion spreads so that even if they are not, officially, in a costume many of the folks at the big T20 matches dress up in all the colour and flags of the Caribbean; the stands are a sea of colour, of people jumping to music, waving at the TV camera, or shouting some picong at someone in the stands or even on the field. Music abounds, some of it rather lame, but some of it great, and people are up dancing and making merry every time there is a break in the action out in the middle.

Certainly it’s not everyone’s cup of tea – one English writer labelled it “a circus”, but the people building these franchises have looked at all the dead air and long quiet periods on the field in 5-day cricket; they have turned on the entertainment spigot and brought it into T20 big time, and as a business approach it has generally been successfully applied. Even in the use of the now more mobile television cameras, the producers of these events are expertly courting fan reactions with their roving closeups and the responses justify the idea with these ‘waving at the camera’ scenes now a standard part of every cricket broadcast on TV. Of late, we are even seeing diversions coming to the field on the down time between overs with various tumblers or acrobats livening up the atmosphere.

The reality – and this may have been the franchise promoters’ intentions – is that T20 now is actually more than a cricket match; it has become an event in society where cricket is certainly the central plank but there are other pieces widening the appeal and contributing to the younger and more female spectators now present at the matches. It is in keeping with the age in which we live, in that the entertainment ingredient has become a significant factor in any business venture. It is there in music, where shows