by Spartan Sense

Created on: September 04, 2007

The future of cricket as a TRUE world sport lies in 20/20 cricket. At the moment there are 10 test playing nations and Zimbabwe's future lies in the balance. Surprisingly there are another 27 countries that are listed as playing organised cricket worldwide but realistically there are only 6-7 of them that could potentially play in future 1-day world cups.

Europeans don't understand it, Americans aren't aware of its existence. Of the minority that know a little something about cricket as soon as somebody tries to explain the rules to them they lose interest or their brain explodes attempting to understand all the information that comes in. Of those that actually stay interested as soon as they are informed that one match could last as much as FIVE days their jaw will drop to the floor quicker than you can say "Murali is a chucker". Sport fans the world over complain about baseball lasting so many hours when they learn about cricket they are looking for a chair to flop on.

We of the test playing nations that have grown up on cricket love the sport and there are many points which we debate on as to why we love this game so much. But lets face it-if we weren't Australian , English, Indian etc. etc. chances are we wouldn't know the game existed or we would snub it for the same reasons the rest of the world does. Too long , too boring, too slow, too complicated. Even the one day game gets a hammering by ignorant non appreciative sports fans-"oh geez dude it takes a whole day to play, man I'm going surfing and check out the chicks".

The sad truth is most people haven't actually been to a game to taste any sort of atmosphere and experience the game. What we need is a 3 hour game of cricket to offer new fans that would want to try something different-well guess what?
We have that 3 hour game , it,s called 20\20 and it's a very fast
and exciting brand of cricket-just what cricket needs to entice new nations and new potential fans. The traditionalists will go on and on and on about how it's just not how cricket is meant to be played but lets not forget what was said when the pyjama game was brought on by Kerry Packer. Now the 1-day world cup is one of the most anticipated events on the calendar.

Just imagine talking to a football mad Italian or Frenchman and trying to convince them to go to a match of test cricket. As soon as you tell them your match ticket is for the whole day they will look at you as if you are an invader from Mars. And then the beauty-the match goes on for

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