How do you like your cricket? Do you like it as a test of skill and endurance over five days? Or perhaps you like the one day version, with matches decided within 100 overs? Or maybe you're a crash, bang, wallop type of person and prefer the recent advent of Twenty20 cricket where matches are decided within about 3 hours? There's certainly plenty of choice and, of course, liking one form of the sport doesn't precude you from also loving the other variants.
Let's look then at the three forms of cricket. We'll start with the longer more traditional form of the sport and work our way down to the sport's feisty youngest child, Twenty20.
We'll see along the way that the first ever international cricket match was contested by the United States and Canada, and that cricket now encompasses nations as diverse as Bangladesh, Kenya, Ireland and the Bahamas.
Test Matches (5 day cricket):
Test matches are played over five days, and both sides have the opportunity to bat twice provided that there is time within those five days. The point from when a team goes in to bat and when they have been all bowled out is called an innings, so the idea with test cricket is that there can be four innings during the duration of the match. What really sets test cricket apart from its shorter version cousins is the fact that there is no time or over restriction when a team is batting, other than the fact that the match must be completed within the allotted five days. An over, incidentally, is a term used to describe the set of six bowling deliveries that a bowler is allowed to have before the next bowler steps in to bowl.
The fact that test matches are played over a considerably longer duration means that batsmen have less pressure to score at a rapid rate, unless they find themselves chasing a big target that the other side has set. Batsmen can generally be judicious about which balls they decide to go after and which they defend. This, in turn, means that bowlers have to rely more on skill than luck in order to get batsmen out. For this reason, test cricket is often described as the ultimate test of cricket players' abilities.
There is also more strategy involved in test cricket. If one team has got in first and racked up a very big score, they might be tempted to declare their innings and put the other team in to bat, rather than continuing until their whole team have been bowled out. The advantage of this is that it gives them more time to bowl the other team out but, of course, there's a risk that the other team might score more runs and win the match.
Another aspect of test cricket is that teams tend to opt primarily for a mix of players who are specialist batsmen and specialist bowlers. There may be some all-rounders but having the best bowler may be the difference between winning and losing, even if he can hardly score a run with the bat. The shorter forms of the game place a much bigger emphasis upon everyone being able to hit big with the bat.
Test matches can be won, drawn (tied) or lost. Sometimes it's quite clear why one team has won. They have bowled out the opposition twice and then have scored more runs with the bat during their innings. However, there are other times when the outcome may appear less clear. Let's take an example where rain has affected a match. The first team may have racked up 500 runs and the second team is batting and has scored 350 runs for the loss of three players. There are eleven players in a cricket team, so the second team still can lose another six wickets before being bowled out. If the match is terimnally interrupted due to rain, flooding, or any other reason, then a decision has to be taken over whether the match is called a draw or awarded to one of the teams. This predicament is resolved by means of a complicated scoring system called the Duckworth Lewis system. I don't intend to try to explain the mechanisms of this scoring system here but the key point is that all sides accept it as the means of deciding matches that can't otherwise be decided.
The first ever test match was played, in Australia, in 1877 and saw Australia triumph over England. This wouldn't be the Aussies only triumph over the nation that gave birth to cricket, although it would be another five years before the now customary Ashes series began between the two nations. Interestingly, though, whilst that match in 1877 was the first officially recognised "test match", it was not the first ever international cricket match. That honour, perhaps surprisingly, goes to a match between the United States and Canada in 1844. I guess this was a few years before the baseball craze really took hold in North America.
One day cricket:
It's quite a big commitment for fans to make to watch test cricket as it unfolds over 5 days. Therefore, it was probably only a matter of time before calls for a shorter version of the sport were heeded. As it turned out, however, the cricket traditionalists held out, against what they saw as a dilution of their sport, until 1963 when limited overs cricket was trialled in England.
Over time, the popularity of one day cricket has grown and it is played both domestically and at international level. Additionally, since 1975, there has been a Cricket one day World Cup, which provides cricket with an opportunity to expand its popularity in much the same way as the Football (soccer) and Rugby World Cup competitions have done.
The main differences that one day cricket introduced were that play was condensed down to one day, and usually no more than 100 overs, and teams only were allowed one chance to bat. If you get bowled out in the first ten overs, then that's you out even if you were scheduled to have 50 overs. What this means is that it's vital to make full use of every allotted over when batting. However, because the match is condensed into a much shorter timeframe, it encourages teams to go out and score more quickly. Big hitting is more commonplace in one day cricket than in test matches, and players will also more readily go for risky running between the wickets to supplement their score.
This emphasis upon scoring heavily within a shorter space of time and the need to bat for the full allotted number of overs has resulted in two things. Firstly, it favours batsmen who can score runs quickly and, secondly, it is advantageous to be able to bat all the way down the order. Whereas in test matches the best batsmen are prepared to take their time and guard their wicket, the onus (in one day matches) is on the best batsmen to score quickly and they therefore take more risks and are more likely to get out. Specialist bowlers become more of a luxury if you might be faced with a situation where your front order natsmen have been quickly skittled and you need your lower order players to score some runs.
Twenty20 cricket:
As cricket has moved into the 21st century, it has faced many commercial challenges. Sports fans have so many choices these days, both in terms of sports that they can attend or watch on the TV, and this had meant that viewing figures had fallen in cricket. This was particularly the case in the domsetic game, where clubs had been further handicapped by the fact that their best players were sometimes signed up on central contracts by their nation and participated mainly in international matches.
Therefore, as much as many cricket organisers love and respect test cricket and one day cricket, they wanted to find a way to revitalise the sport and bring in revenue and new fans. The idea that they hit upon was of shortening the game further and placing the emphasis firmly upon huge hitting and fast-paced drama. Twenty20 matches see each team have 20 overs to score runs and matches last around 3 hours. This means that games can be played in the evenings, under flashlights, to bring in people who wouldn't attend a match played in the afternoon or at weekends. Loud music and brightly coloured outfits add to the razzmataz.
It's perhaps not surprising, therefore, that Twenty20 divides cricket fans down the middle. Half love it and embrace the vitality that it encompasses. The other half look disdainfully at it and claim that it will be the death-knell of the more skilful and truer form of the sport, test cricket.
There is, however, one very definite advantage to the two limited overs versions of the sport and that is the fact that it's much easier for emerging cricket nations to compete against the bigger boys. Nations such as Bangladesh, Kenya, Canada, Holland, Ireland, Scotland, the Bahamas and the US can pull off a shock win much more easily in Twenty20 than they can in test matches. This, in turn, helps to increase the popularity of the sport beyond its traditional (and mostly colonial) boundaries which can only be healthy. Hopefully, the interest generated by Twenty20 can also be used to respark interest in test cricket, which still does remain the truest form of cricket and the biggest challenge of skill and endurance.
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