The Surfer

Is Twenty20 now 50-50 proposition?

There’s a certain irony in that the latest broadside against Twenty20 cricket comes from Australia, the country which took one-day cricket, made it a modern product with coloured clothing, white balls and floodlights … and then flogged it to death

Martin Williamson
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There’s a certain irony in that the latest broadside against Twenty20 cricket comes from Australia, the country which took one-day cricket, made it a modern product with coloured clothing, white balls and floodlights … and then flogged it to death with endless round-robin series which left players exhausted and airlines counting the cash. In The Australian, Mike Coward is less than impressed with the new format:

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What purpose does it fill in the international arena other than providing the ICC with another dedicated event it can call its own?

So much for the joy of the traditional game and the apparent re-establishment of the Ashes as the game's iconic series: that was eight days ago. Since Ponting and his team-mates held up the Waterford Crystal trophy - rather than the actual urn which, for the moment, is on display at the Melbourne Cricket Club's new museum at the MCG - there have been 10 Twenty20 matches around the country, including the international won by Australia over England at the SCG on Tuesday. Yesterday the 50-over format got under way and the domestic Twenty20 final is on today. Roll up. Roll up.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Philip Derriman looks at the way the game has grabbed a large - and fresh - audience:

The TV audience for Tuesday's match against England, which averaged 2.31 million and peaked at 2.81 million, was an all-time record for any kind of cricket match in Australia. Previously, the biggest audience was the one that tuned in to last year's Twenty20 match against South Africa. Its average audience was 2.18 million.

To judge from the fans at the SCG on Tuesday night, the audience was young as well as big. When at one point during the telecast Ian Healy wandered into a section of the grandstand with his microphone, he looked to be the only one over 21.

Healy had the following exchange with a pony-tailed girl of around 11 years old: Did you come to the Test match? No. Did your dad? Yes. Are you thinking you might come to the one-day matches now? Maybe. Or just stick with Twenty20? Twenty20!

Australia

Martin Williamson is executive editor of ESPNcricinfo and managing editor of ESPN Digital Media in Europe, the Middle East and Africa