Talk about a favorite in T20?

Probably T20 is still in its nascent stage at the international level and probably things will change further in the years to come, but a few basic things that have emerged out of T20 world would probably remain the same. And I hope so, because that is good for cricket. One of such things is the end of dominance of a few teams over others. Compare it to Test Teams and the One day teams, where we have definite favorites going into a series or tournament. Agreed, upsets are a part in those formats too, but not to the same extent as we have been seeing in T20. After all, Australians have ruled the world of Test and One day cricket for almost a decade now.

Look at these facts. In IPL-2, the last year’s bottom ranked teams, Deccan and Royal Challengers were the finalists. Only three days into the World Twenty20 and one of the Kings of cricket teams thus far is out of the tournament. An associate member of ICC, Ireland easily Pushed Bangladesh out of the second round and England the host team were galloped by the nascent Netherlands in the opening game. Another finalist for the last World Twenty20 is struggling to move to the second stage.

So who is your favorite for World Twenty20? Yes, now you have the luxury to keep Australia out and probably by tomorrow you would also be comfortable to keep a few good teams out. But the question is, coming into this tournament, how many of us believed that Australia would crack like this? How many of us believed that Netherlands would punish a Team that is considered to be the father of this format? How many of us thought that Pakistan would be so unsure about its place in the second stage? Do we still dare to have a favorite?

One of my favorite writer, Harsha Bhogle, recently mentioned in his article about the impact of the duration of a game by saying “If football was played over 20 minutes Manchester United and Barcelona may not have been in the final.”. This is the underlying difference between a T20 and other fatherly forms of cricket. When the game is reduced to shorter duration, the strategies must change and at the same time, it adds an element of surprise into it. It is easier to play at your top level for 3 hours, but not so easy when you have to stretch the same to over a day. At the same time, there is a little room for making mistakes when you are up in the short format, since there is a little room for recovery. In the longer format of the game, even if you make some mistakes, there is time for you to recover, your team and the captain can plan out counter attacking strategies. But such luxuries are not accepted by T20. Such basic things have allowed us to see surprises more often which in fact are not surprises, because there have been far too many. This probably is the core of T20. And probably this would be the reason for T20 to be a huge success.