A New Begining and a Lesson

T20 is (definitely) here to stay. I couldn't resist but add the word "definitely" after I heard my anti-cricket mate say it was refreshing after she was forced to watch it. With my own purist reservations, I started to watch the Indo-Pak encounter. What a match it turned out to be? This is what all it takes to make any version of any game popular, a nail biting thriller.

T20 is believed to be heavily loaded in batsmen favour, with the rules tailor made for batsmen. But this match could well be a lesson in how to balance the favour between both the batters and bowlers. Under the overcast conditions, with a damp pitch good disciplined seam bowling was required. And Mohammad Asif just produced that. He was well supported by Gul and the awkward actioned Tanvir. It's never easy to set a target with no benchmarks available handy, but Utthappa and Dhoni managed to get India to 141, a not so compeitative total.

Indian seamers started off well. Both RP and Sreesanth swung the ball admirably and they were backed by the best fielding by an Indain side in a long while. Coming from the fielding-blues of English summer, this side has reemphasised the importance of youth in the shorter versions of the game. And the Paki Batsmen's over defensive approach combined with good spells from Irfan and Harbhajan. A late burst from Misbah-Ul-Haq and Arafat tilted the game towards Pakistan by the last over. But Indians held their nerve with fielders bought in and tied the match.

It wasn't over, there was Bowl-Out to follow for the first time in the T20 history to decide who would carry 2 points forward to the next round. During Bowl-Out, five nominated bowlers from each side have a GO at the stumps (with no batsmen to defend them), similar to penalty shootouts for Hockey, Football, the Side with the more hits gets home. In that kiddish affair, pakistanis unbeleively missed all three times while their counterparts managed it every single time to take home two points forward. Another typical Indo-Pak match.

Its only fitting that this thriller had less than 300 runs produced in it. Let the bowlers not die a thousand deaths for the sake of entertainment, that's brutal. Not only would that discourage youngsters taking to the role of a bowler, but also devalues their roles. No team game should belittle any of it's own facet for their needs to be an opportunity and challenge for everybody in it to be lived up to. The administration can take care of the bowlers by not producing belters all the time, may be relaxing/adding a couple of rules against the batsmen. Only then will this game do well in the very long run.