Twenty20 is for grown-ups
Sunday's match between England and India was good enough to convert all but the most curmudgeonly of cricket's followers
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
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Sunday's match between England and India was good enough to convert all but the most curmudgeonly of cricket's followers. With this tournament, and with this match in particular, Twenty20 has shown itself to be a game for grown-ups, writes Richard Williams in the Guardian.
As we saw when Broad and Ryan Sidebottom bowled the final two overs of the match knowing that 12 balls were all that stood between India and the 28 runs the defending champions needed to avoid elimination, Twenty20 is making stringent technical demands on its players. The classic requirement of a sound technique with bat or ball is no longer enough. Now, with every delivery carrying significance, the players need to be endlessly adaptable and audacious, inventing their responses to meet the demands of the moment.
The empty seats at the Lord's pavilion just highlight the snobbery of the MCC members, who still continue to believe Twenty20 is hit-and-giggle cricket, Tim de Lisle writes in the Times.
The game had everything - except a full house. The stands were packed, but on the white benches of the world-famous pavilion there were wide empty spaces. Usually on big-match days, MCC members have to get in early and bag a seat with a newspaper. On Sunday the newspaper could have had a seat of its own. MCC has 18,000 full members, all supposedly united by a love of cricket. Yet only a few hundred bothered to attend the biggest match so far in a vibrant tournament. What was going on? They can't all have been at evensong.
Nishi Narayanan is a staff writer at ESPNcricinfo