New face of cricket

With the evolvement of T20 cricket, in the last few years of the game, the face of cricket has changed immensely. Not many years ago, a normal cricket tour used to be at least of 3-4 months duration. Players had lots of leisure time during these tours, they used to get permission to visit places and their wives used to accompany them as well for the whole tour. Teams used to reach the touring country well in advance, just to get used to the playing conditions. A minimum of 2 practice matches were played before the start of the tour, even a day’s break was available between the 5 days of the test.

ODIs were usually followed by test matches. When India went to the Pakistan tour in 2004, ODIs were scheduled before test matches and a lot of concerns were raised on whether the same intent will be present for test matches after the high pressure one days? Will the test matches be able to attract the same crowds after exhaustive ODI series, etc?

Now if we take a look at the current Australia’s tour of Sri Lanka, it reflects the modern era of cricket. The team arrived on 31^st July but the tour started just after a week on 6^th August, which means there was not enough time to get adjusted to the conditions. This may not be required for teams like Pakistan or India because here in the sub-continent, the playing conditions don’t change drastically. But a team like Australia which is in a rebuilding phase and for most of its players it is their 1^st tour of Sri Lanka, so practice matches are really important. To neutralize this, T20 are organized first, followed by ODIs and Test.

Even the gaps between matches has been reduced a lot, means no time to analyze previous games and prepare for the coming games. This is the reason why the size of the supporting staff has increased. Previously a single coach used to take care of everything, but now we have a separate batting coach, bowling coach, fielding coach, keeping coach, analyst etc supporting the head coach. Nowadays, the head coach has become like a manager of a football team. Few years on, we will see a complete reflection of the professionalism in football in Cricket.

With the arrival of T20 format many experts speculate that it is a format of entertainment and will finish off the purest form of Cricket which is Test match. But it has helped other formats to establish their own following in world cricket, fear about Test cricket’s future has vanished. Now organizers have got a license to play with tour, test matches can be scheduled at the start or end, T20s and ODI can be fit anywhere. Also the test cricket has become more result oriented after T20 cricket’s arrival, which has increased interest in Test cricket.

These days most of the countries have accepted the approach of having different teams for T20, ODIs and Test matches. Its sounds good from audience perspective, also youngsters get more chances on the international arena. But what about those senior players, who play in all the 3 forms of the game? they are the one who suffer most because of tight schedules and always complaint about the excessive cricket, and they are more prone to injuries.

With the amount of money flowing into cricket, the pressure of maintaining a balance between all three format of games, ICC and boards are trying their level best to adjust cricket schedules. ICC are trying to introduce new innovations into cricket by frequently revising rules to keep it more competitive. But one question remains unanswered, are these efforts enough to sustain for longer periods, or they are just temporary patch ups to the leaking base of cricket viewers?