Twenty20 needs a different spin

The recent emergence of the Twenty20 game has confronted traditional cricket with the equivalent of a reverse swinging yorker, writes Greg Dyer in the Sunday Herald. He says that Twenty20 is both the greatest challenge to real cricket since Kerry Packer and an even greater opportunity to grow the game's financial base and future prosperity.

Twenty20 can and should be leveraged to provide a renewed financial basis for the game, providing funds which can be directed to the ongoing development of the generations of players to follow.

In fact, Twenty20 can provide a big part of the answer to the 21st-century challenges of keeping the sport relevant to today's target market of 10-year-olds. Firstly, Twenty20's bright lights will attract them to the sport and then, if leveraged properly, it can provide the money to train them. So those responsible for the next steps in Twenty20's commercialisation have the tough job of designing a structure which creates value in the right parts of the system for the long-term benefit (or perhaps even the survival?) of the sport.

Peter Roebuck, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says the IPL, a competition tainted by corruption, is more concerned with money and show than the spirit of the game.

Cricket is finished as an international game, and hereafter faces a long and slow decline caused by a board that lacks vision and integrity, a board of knaves and fools that makes one-star decisions while staying in five-star hotels. Through no fault of the ICC's admirable employees, cricket has become a corrupt and worthless activity and deserves nothing better than the Indian Premier League, a format known for jiggery pokery, social excesses and cosmetic grins.

The IPL has got off to a subdued start, says Dileep Premachandran writing in the Guardian, and the impact of the league's expansion is already being felt.

Prior to the [opening] match, several fans at the gate admitted to being emotionally spent. They seemed to be there out of habit more than anything else. They'll find that easier to do in Chennai than at other venues because the Super Kings are the only franchise to have retained the core of the team that tasted so much success last year. Muttiah Muralitharan may have moved on to Kochi and the Tuskers, and Matthew Hayden hasn't been invited back, but the rest of the cast isn't very different. Contrast that with the likes of Bangalore Royal Challengers, with not one big-name local player, or Delhi Daredevils – only Virender Sehwag of the stars has roots in the area – and it's easy to see why Chennai can expect sizeable crowds throughout the season.

TR Vivek, writing in the Economic Times, answers the question 'is the IPL making money for the team owners?' The franchise model, he says, is risk free.

Saumya Bhattacharya and Kamya Jaiswal, writing in the same paper, tell us why MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh would have excelled in an office.