Buzzin Cricket

Moving the IPL (Indian Premier League) to South Africa this year has not affected its popularity, and all the time there is so much money on offer, the best cricketers from all over the world will want to play in the tournament.

But reading recent cricket news concerns have been raised as to the importance young and emerging cricketers may now place on playing Twenty20 style cricket, which lends itself to fast, furious, slogging over the more  sophisticated tactical awareness of defend and attack batting necessary for traditional Test Match cricket.

Twenty20 is exciting, fast-paced and for that alone is very popular, but more importantly easier to watch as a spectator or armchair fanatic as it has condensed the game of cricket into a few hours.  It has even spawned free Fantasy Cricket IPL games.

Until Twenty20 and the IPL, cricket had not changed and was very much steeped in tradition.  Apart from the late 1970’s when Kerry Packer attempted a similar league in Australia has the ECB (England Cricket Board) and others faced such a threat to the importance of test match cricket.  And there lies the issue.  Traditionalists and the ECB don’t want to lose control to a new version of the game of cricket.

Yesterday former Yorkshire and England cricket legend, Geoffrey Boycott firmly argued that players could not switch from Twenty20 to Test Match cricket without consequences.  He argued there was nothing wrong with cricketers playing both but the styles are so different for a batsman that there would be repercussions for the England cricket team.

But England’s Ravi Bopara, who has only just returned from playing for Kings XI Punjab in the IPL appears to be silencing such a view by making 118 not out after his century helped England to 289-7 on day one of the 1st Test Match against West Indies.

But even then Boycott and BBC commentator Jonathan Agnew suggested there were lapses of concentration from Bopara towards the end of the day which they agreed was possibly due to the different mentality of Twenty20 and Test Match cricket batting styles.