Everyone is busy witnessing the last ball finishes in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL), but the history of twenty-twenty game is as much interesting as any T20 clash. The credit goes to England for bringing innovation to the game. Following England’s sad exit from the Cricket World Cup 2003, the team wanted to improve its domestic cricket and invented the T20 cricket. In those days such matches were unofficially played in various parts of England and other nearby areas. However, an official T20 match was played only in the year 2005.
T20 Cricket
The date February 17th, 2005 is immortal in the history of cricket. It was a defining moment of cricket and since then the world of cricket has changed forever. Australia and New Zealand played officially the first ever shortest format of the game in Auckland on that day and the rest is history. Some dates are considered to be the red-letter day and the 17th February falls in the same category.
It was only after the various twenty-twenty matches that ICC formulated a new rule in which only 4 players could field outside the 30-yard circle. If the same rule had been announced earlier then there is no doubt that batsmen like Sanath Jayasuriya, Kumar Sangakkara, Ricky Ponting and Sachin Tendulkar would have hit more than 200 centuries together.
Amidst the popularity of T20 clashes, a debate has suddenly come sprung up that whether the cricket is a batsman’s game or bowler’s game? There is no straight forward answer to it. However, legends like Muttiah Muralitharan, Sachin Tendulkar and others opined that the game of cricket is slowly turning in favor of batsman, especially in the ODIs and T20 matches.
The twenty-twenty cricket has brought a lot of innovation to the game. Earlier batsmen loved playing perfect cricketing shots, but the advent of T20 has made it easier for the batsmen to hit unorthodox shots too. Even someone like Sachin Tendulkar has played a helicopter shot during IPL 2011. AB de Villiers is well known for his strange shots and so on.
Logically speaking, Cricket can’t be termed as a batsmen’s game anymore. If that was the case then Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) would have easily defeated Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at the match held in Chepauk Stadium, Chennai on Tuesday. In fact, a team has to excel in all department of the game to win matches. A team has to bat well and then defend the total with some excellent fielding on the field; it is as simple as this. Chennai did the same and registered an emphatic 2-run victory over KKR.
The victory of any team depends upon its ability to bat and bowl under pressure. It is equally important that the team implements its strategies well. The outstanding show by Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings in the current IPL 8 is the vibrant example to the fact that only the all-round performance of a team wins matches. The same can be applied in case of T20s, ODIs and Test matches as well.
Tags: Chennai Super Kings, CSK, England, Indian Premier League, IPL, IPL 2015, IPL 8, KKR, Kolkata Knight Riders, Rajasthan Royals, RR, T20, T20 Cricket
