No laughing matter

Ricky Ponting made history this week as the first Australian cricket captain to "laugh off" a 100-run defeat by England.

It is a delicious paradox that England, having been rightly regarded as the arch-snobs of the world game for so long, are wholeheartedly embracing 20-over cricket while Australians and others look down their noses at it.

I recall a degree of Aussie crowing back in February when their triumph over the Beige Brigade in Auckland meant they had won the inaugural Test (1877), the inaugural one-day international (1971) and then the inaugural Twenty20 (2005). There was a distinct absence of humility following their defeat by England in Southampton on Monday.

Nor was there any acknowledgement that the 20-over format was anything other than a bit of a giggle for the less discerning punter. Even John Buchanan, who normally has a dozen wacko ideas before breakfast, maintained that Twenty20 should get back in its box.

This might be an ill-advised comment but the Australians are wrong. Twenty20 is here to stay and it will revolutionise cricket.

Each cricket-playing nation has its own unique issues and concerns about how best to present cricket to the public: Tests are popular in some places, not in others; likewise with one-dayers; day-night matches rarely work in England; early twilights in the sub-continent; and so the list goes on.

But what cricket the world over has craved and continues to crave is context and Twenty20 can provide that. People do not tune into, say, the final of football World Cup in their millions because they expect it to be a defining example of the beautiful game. They watch it because they care about the result, whether their team is competing or not.

Limited-overs cricket might be a shortened form of the game but it still takes a heck of long time to play and World Cups grow ever more tedious. The fifty-over game still hampers global expansion of cricket because it is nigh on impossible for a serious underdog to win and one-sided ODIs are excruciating to watch. And it also still takes a heck of a long time to play it.

Twenty20 matches do not offer as many nail-biting finishes as one might imagine and you would still expect Australia to smash USA in whatever format but at least it doesn't take five hours. It's only 23 years ago that Hungary beat El Salvador 10-1 in the football World Cup final stages - the slaughtering of the underdog is a rite of passage that sports wishing to expand must endure.

But Twenty20 offers so many enduring possibilities. The World Cup could be played in half the time with twice as many exciting matches. The latter stages could involve multi-match series (similar to baseball) to decide eventual winners. The tension and interest builds because of the importance of the result. It is not reliant solely on the games within the games which so much one-day cricket relies on now.

Test cricket survives because it is the ultimate form of the game and most Test series have an inherent status and prestige. The 50-over no longer has that, partly because there's too much of it and partly because the format has become stale and allows mediocrity to flourish.

Twenty20 does not allow mediocrity to flourish. Ponting said he wouldn't spend much time analysing the video of the England match. Maybe he should. Australia's fielding was an embarrassment at times. Maybe that's because it's early in their tour, maybe not. Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood played some outstanding shots that were properly thought-out and superbly executed.

The cricket played in Twenty20 has to be explosive but that does undermine its quality or "properness". Some say it's a lottery but then people used to say that about one-dayers. But Twenty20 allows you the possibility of the mini-series played over two or three days within a larger tournament encourages the best to shine through.

It may be a limited-over format but its possibilities are limitless. Go on Punter, take a chance on Twenty20. You might even get quite good at it.