Twenty reasons to love T20… or to hate it

[vamos_rafa]

1. It is so breathless that you don't need to bother to employ the relatively recently evolved areas of the pre-frontal cortex in your brain. The rather more primitive sections of gray matter will automatically take charge. 2. You don't have to lie to your boss about your wife's “ill-health†to take the afternoon off to catch the match on television. Twenty20 will almost always begin after the end of office hours for most fans in this part of the world. 3. You don't have to wait patiently for 40 overs for the slam-bang-wallop stuff to begin. Twenty20 has fast-forwarded the climax — although, only because that is all there is to it, investing climactic thrills with a banality which, in hindsight, doesn't appear wholly undeserving. 4. You are unlikely to drink yourself to a comatose state watching it in a pub because the match lasts all of three hours. But then, you never know! 5. You will get to watch that silliest of silly acts — a spectator catching the ball in the stands and jumping up and down like a World Cup winner — much more often. For, in Twenty20, it rains sixes, with or without Kieron Pollard. 6. Many more kids will get to own players' shirts as prized possessions — not to speak of the delight the female of the species might experience watching that gift being accepted! 7. You don't have to watch Sreesanth bowl 10 overs and take you through an over-enthusiastic circus clown's gamut of emotions. 8. You don't have to hear all the nonsense about footwork and “playing in the ‘V'†from staid old men with post-doctoral degrees in the art and science of cricket. For, cricket has shed its sorry skin to become a pure, unadulterated ballgame. Who gives a damn about finesse and elegance and other such ‘virtues' of the age of the dinosaurs! 9. In the unlikely event of the game turning out to be a yawning bore, you can always turn your attention to the mind-numbing, soul-shattering “music†and the scantily clad cheerleaders gyrating like drunken bonobos. 10. Tens of thousands of man-hours being lost by Corporate India to One-Day Internationals can be saved by this slick three-hour package. 11. All the talk about “bowling at the deathâ€, whatever that meant, has vanished. Mercifully so. For, this is do-or-die from start to finish. 12. Gleeful advertisers aren't complaining either. They are getting better value for money as fans are unlikely to take their eyes off the TV screen between overs because of the risk of missing a sensational hit off the first ball of a new over. 13. Cricket in its most compressed format might turn out to be a better option than spending three hours or more in a cinema hall watching men and women turn the mate choice game into something Darwin — or even Masters and Johnson — never dreamt of. 14. We have finally got to understand the real role of serendipity in our universe. For Dame Fortune has become the all-powerful Third Umpire. After all, Blaise Pascal was not really stretching a point when he said, “Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole history of the world would have been different.†Had Misbah-ul-Haq's shot off the third ball of the last over in the first ever World T20 final at Johannesburg travelled a few inches farther, Pakistan cricket might not have been in the mess in which it finds itself today. 15. At last, cricket might even have the chance to invade the Promised Land — the United States of America. Twenty20 can hope to compete with baseball, and Dhoni, nearing retirement age, might even fancy a multi-million dollar package of the sort that lured David Beckham to Los Angeles. 16. Cricket might be a religion here but it is T20 that is truly our sport, no matter where it is played. Just take a look at the hoardings around the ground and listen to the India-centric banter in the commentary box for confirmation. 17. Brave New India, Middle Class Urban India, ‘Rising' India, an India ready to let its hair down and cast off its cultural inhibitions, has been offered a mirror that throws up an image we can be ‘proud' of. Some might see it as tawdrily attractive cultural kitsch sliced off from the cancerous underbelly of a great sport. But what the hell, T20 is Our Game. Let the party begin. 18. If, like a relapsing alcoholic, we develop a tendency to reassure ourselves that all this is not happening, that “this is not usâ€, then it is a sure sign that we are in denial — not a bad place to be, for everybody gets there at some point of time. 19. You never need to worry about a match being fixed. For you are never going to know how it happened, no matter how resourceful the News of the World sleuths might be. For, every shot appears near-suicidal. 20. Finally, this is, at last, the right fix for us. For, products of popular culture are never created in a vacuum. A society must show a level of readiness to lap them up indiscriminately before even the most ingenious marketing wizard can dare dream up these things.

Published in The Hindu...

[Desi Cartman]

4. You are unlikely to drink yourself to a comatose state watching it in a pub because the match lasts all of three hours. But then, you never know! 7. You don't have to watch Sreesanth bowl 10 overs and take you through an over-enthusiastic circus clown's gamut of emotions.

[Zap_Brannigan]

Reason #4 is rather close to home. I usually like to drink a bottle/can/glass of beer every 45 minutes while watching a game. A T20 is long enough to get a buzz and get it going for sometime but short enough that i dont get drunk and forget about the match!!