Twenty-Twenty Vision

Last week I went to The Oval to watch Surrey play Essex in the NatWest T20 Blast; it was the first cricket match I had been to since 2006 when I was coincidentally at The Oval for the Saturday of the England v Pakistan Test match. I used to be a regular cricket watcher many years ago, but like a lot of things in life, my habits and circumstances changed - as did the other people I used to watch Essex with - and I stopped going.

A packed Oval (eventually) under the lights for the T20 Blast match between Surrey and Essex.

When I did watch Essex play, back in the 1970's and 1980's, it was normally one-day games in the John Player League or Benson & Hedges Cup, with occasional forays into the County Championship to watch a day's play at grounds like Valentines Park in Ilford, sadly no longer used by the county side who now rarely venture away from their headquarters at Chelmsford. Essex concentrating matches at one ground rather than taking games around the county is just one of many, many changes that cricket has seen in the years since I stopped going to matches. Grounds generally have improved beyond compare, for instance, the facilities that Essex offered spectators forty years ago would not be acceptable today, indeed many would breach Health and Safety regulations. And on the pitch, the game has changed immeasurably as well.

Valentines Park in Ilford now plays host only to club cricket.

The short form of the game - the matches limited to 60, 50, or 40 overs in competitions such as the Gillette (later NatWest) Cup, Benson & Hedges Cup, and John Player League respectively- has always had its detractors: there have always been people who see the four-day County Championship or five-day international Test matches as the 'proper' format, and view the limited overs game as an entertainment rather than proper cricket. But at least the 60, 50, or 40 over matches gave teams and players scope to build innings, to shape matches by switching tactics and with bowling changes: the Twenty20 game is to many people, just not cricket.

What is indisputable is that Twenty20 cricket has required players to be fitter, more athletic, stronger, and with better reactions. You only have to compare the running between the wickets and the fielding in modern day cricket - especially the Twenty20 game - to the pedestrian performances of thirty or forty years ago to see the benefits that the short-form of the game have brought; even the mundane act of returning the ball to the bowler is conducted with a speed and ferocity that a 1960's cricketer could not have achieved fielding in anger. But Twenty20 cricket demands that as many runs as possible are scored as quickly as possible, and inevitably such an objective means that technique is sacrificed. The debate about the pros and cons of Twenty20 cricket as it affects the standards of play will doubtless rumble on for some time, and by more expert commentators than me, but it is not just at the wicket and out in the field that the Twenty20 has generated discussion, and will continue to.

Off the pitch, Twenty20 cricket has, like other limited over formats, been a hit with the spectators. In 2014, over 704,000 people watched Twenty20 games, compared with just over 510,000 who watched County Championship games in  2015. The game I saw at The Oval was sold out, as are many Twenty20 games, yet many in the crowd - and I'm more inclined to call them an audience - seemed less than entirely focussed on what was going on in front of them. Many people have said that Twenty20 cricket is for people who aren't interested in cricket, (in fact, someone said it to me just last Saturday), and from my own observations, that is pretty close to the mark.

Last week at The Oval, by 6.30pm, when the first ball was bowled, there were rows and rows of empty seats in front of me. They filled up - eventually - with groups of people who seemed equally interested in eating, drinking, and chatting as they were in the cricket, perhaps more so in fact, given the frequency with which they disappeared to replenish their supplies of nachos, cheeseburgers, and beer. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with that - if that's what they want to do, who am I to object? - but conversely, while nipping off to get a snack or a drink occasionally is almost a necessity if you are watching a whole day of a Test match, where play may run into seven hours or more, doing so in a Twenty20 game - which lasts less than half that time and is a lot more fast paced - means missing a fairly big chunk of what you primarily paid for.

I would surmise that for many in the crowd at The Oval, the evening was as much a social occasion as a sporting one. Looked at that way, a warm summer evening spent outdoors in the company of friends, with virtually limitless food and drink, is a lot of people's idea of time well spent. And it comes with the added bonus of being in pleasant surroundings - The Oval is attractive and ticks all of the boxes, in terms of facilities - and the cricket gives you something to watch when the conversation runs dry, even if you are not an enthusiast.

From the perspective of the clubs, the income that one-day games generate is crucial to their survival. The eighteen First Class counties had just 80,000 members (akin to the football club season ticket holder) between them in 2016, so Twenty20 cricket, with its sell-out crowds and significant income from peripherals, keeps the County Championship game afloat. There is nothing wrong with that, even if the majority in the grounds are casual supporters at best, it does no harm:  I am a great believer in the principle that any club, be it a cricket club, rugby club or football club, should maximise their income from people who have little or no interest in the club itself.

A fairly typical attendance at a County Championship match. Photo: Andrew Fox

Twenty20 cricket is a world away from the game I first watched. The pyrotechnics, the white ball, the coloured kits complete with shirt numbers and players' names, the music that greets a boundary or a wicket, it's all a whole lot of razzmatazz that a spectator from a 1960's County Championship game would barely recognise as cricket. In some ways, Twenty20 cricket is emblematic of today's society, where attention spans have been shortened as the internet reduces our consumption of news and current affairs into increasingly bite-sized chunks, while watching a film, or a show, or a sporting event has to be accompanied by food and drink in increasingly industrial sized quantities.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed my first experience of Twenty20 cricket - even if my team did lose. It has made me more interested in the game than I have been for a while, to the extent that I have bought a ticket for one day of a County Championship game at Chelmsford next month. Fingers crossed that the weather is kind.