It is indeed proof of the Lord’s existence that, at this impoverished juncture, a diversion has arrived in the shape of Twenty20. We don’t know what the god-fearing Pakistanis feel being led onto the ground by Afrikaner/Zulu bokkies in hot cargo pants. Or what manner of strategic beast lurks behind a Bangladeshi scorecard that goes 6W6W6W (or whether the dancing girls get cramps at the end of it). It’s all planets away from the subtle metaphysics of Test cricket. T20 doesn’t believe much in the prolongation (or absence) of suspense, those elegant leaves outside the off, those portly earls soaking in the diurnal rhythms of summer. But it’s still good ol’ wood on leather—and is it too much to ask sportsmen to get a bit physical? How good Pakistan look now, having sacked the podgy, bearded Tablighis with too little faith in themselves and lassoed in a fresh rangy, mountain crop. And those boys straight from the ponds of Mymensingh—what unleveed spunk! Why, one even spies a few in their late ‘twirties’ (that oarsman from Matara, a jack-in-the-box called Brad Hogg) prancing around the park like gazelles in heat.
The real surprise is, for all the bad press about the game being bowdlerised for dummies and neophytes in New Guinea, how much it is like cricket. Spanking good, finger-lickin’ cricket. Not some mutant turtle ninjutsu for the delectation of those who drink genetically modified water, read Japanese robot manga and have a vocabulary somewhere between basic and cobol. T20, if you ask me, is a threat not to Tests but to odis, of which it’s a satisfyingly soccerised variant. Nostalgic for a famous 36 n.o. in 60 overs? You’re neanderthal. You belong under the permafrost in the Siberian tundra with all those tonnes of woolly mammoth dung. Don’t watch cricket? Tough luck. As Advani once said, "Desh ka vayumandal kharab hai". (He wasn’t talking carbon emissions.) Go gently on that sandy bridge from geology to theology....
