Over and out!

TV spectator you don’t get to enjoy the atmospherics: the music, the tight pants, the skivvies and the belly buttons dancing (not always in rhythm, as cheerleaders do to every shot), or shoot out (the figures they’ll have at the end of the series!); players lolling on the sidelines picking grass, noses, fingernails — this is picnic cricket and you have to be there to feast on it.

The five-day and the one-day game are ideal television: they allow us the liberty to watch cricket and live our lives. You can cook a meal and catch the replays; you could have a bath and find that there are still 80 overs to go. You can go to work and have the second half of the match to enjoy (always more gripping). If it’s a day-nighter you could dine out and return for the finish. Why, you can drive, fly or train it to another city and still catch some cricket.

None of this is possible, or if possible, advisable in a Twenty20 match. By the time you have done any of the above, half an innings is over, an innings is complete or the battle lost and won. Here, the first ball is as crucial as the last and every ball in between. You never know when what might happen — that’s the most fun part of the twenties. Basically, you have to donate three hours to cricket. See what happened in the last few matches: New Zealand scored 100 runs against India in the last eight overs — that’s about 25-30 minutes of blows to the fence and beyond.

From our vantage positions at home, the bowl-out in a tied game, is perhaps the most delectable. Heresy to say so. This is where the purist in us clashes with the adventurer. The cricket lover in us is dismayed by this soccer import, especially since the goalie is an inanimate object of three stumps. The speculator in us bets on the odds of a hit, miss and the patriot wants India to win — no matter how.

The game grows on you and engenders an unreasonable desire to see every ball clobbered for a six, at least a four. A dot ball is like watching a wicket fall. This is not recommended for the faint of heart, blood pressure victims or those with weak bladders — even the commercial breaks have been shortened so you cannot sneak off there, without missing a blow which ever way it falls.

ESPN-Star Cricket’s commentators are divided between those who treat this as any other game and those who have responded to the new tempo: Harsha Bhogle is in the latter category, Mohinder Amarnath in the former. If anything he has gotten even slower in his delivery than when he came in to bowl. The commentator’s job just got easier: there’s very little they have to describe and a short time to do it in. Favourite remark? It’s gone, gone, high, high, way way, into the stands…

So, what’s the response? Oh yes, or oh no, depending on whether you’re the 50something purist or the 20something adventurer!