Twenty20 is destroying cricket's culture
William Rees-Mogg, of the Times , has seen the great Don Bradman bat, and isn't impressed with cricket's latest format
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
William Rees-Mogg, of the Times, has seen the great Don Bradman bat, and isn't impressed with cricket's latest format. In fact, he thinks its destroying the game's culture. In his view, Twenty20 "is a good deal less interesting than baseball, which is itself less interesting than cricket". In case you missed it first time round, the piece is now doing the rounds in Australia.
The culture of cricket now seems to be going the way of Troy, or indeed of the Roman Empire. The glory of cricket, with its intelligence and the complexity of the interplay, is sinking into the past. We are moving, surprisingly rapidly, into the dumbed-down cricket of Twenty20. Cricket first developed on village greens such as Hambledon, it looks as though it may come to an end at Bangalore.
Why do I instinctively dislike Twenty20 so much? It is not that I ever played cricket with even the lowest degree of club competence. I did have the good fortune to be a contemporary of Peter May at school. He was the leading batsman of the under-16 XI, and I was their scorer. My objection to Twenty20 is that it purports to be cricket but is a quite different and much less interesting game. Cricket seems to me to be the most fascinating of the team games of summer.
Jamie Alter is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo