Quick and short: On the T20 World Cup
T20 World Cup is seeking to energise cricket’s newest format
Barely a week after the Indian Premier League final (IPL), most of the leading cricketers have already got down to the grind as the ICC Twenty20 World Cup commenced in the United States of America on Saturday (U.S. time). The willow game no longer has an off-season and the championship that would meander through the U.S. and the West Indies, features 20 teams split into four groups and the final will be held in Barbados on June 29. Right through the pedigreed units such as India and Australia to Papua New Guinea and Uganda, the tournament may display an evangelical zeal to promote cricket in a sporting universe that always favours football. Cricket, with its three versions of Tests, ODIs and T20Is, can at times lapse into an identity crisis with the game’s purity and mettle vesting with the five-day format while the commercial muscle almost entirely hinges on the shorter avatars. Even within these layers, the granular issues get complex as T20Is never have the same allure that domestic leagues such as the IPL flaunt. It is in this space that the T20 World Cup hopes to operate and energise the format, once every two years. The ninth edition should offer a cricket of the fast and furious variety while players quickly switch from club loyalties to nationalistic fervour.
Hope too floats as Papua New Guinea turned up despite grappling with a massive landslide and the resultant loss of life back home. For India, the long quest for an ICC trophy gets another episode. The last silverware was the Champions Trophy won in 2013, and since then it has often been a case of so close and yet so far. Rohit Sharma’s men get another tilt and there is no mistaking the talent they collectively possess. There may be simmering issues such as the leadership angle following the awkward transition from Rohit to Hardik Pandya as captain of Mumbai Indians. At the national level, Rohit continues to helm while Pandya becomes his deputy and coach Rahul Dravid, always clued into ego hassles right from his playing days, may have to steer the ship away from choppy waters. Placed in Group A, India will open its campaign against Ireland on Wednesday but the big game is the one involving Pakistan at New York, on Sunday. Geopolitics has meant that it is only in ICC events that the neighbours face off against each other. While batters such as Travis Head and Heinrich Klassen can set rollicking templates, bowlers such as Jasprit Bumrah too will have a role to play in a format that tends to mask nuance under a breathless pace.