Twenty 20 Blog

Since its launch in 2008 the IPL has been a cricketing phenomenon. The money men have long been exploring possibilities to cash in on the game’s immense popularity in Asia and they’ve done so in spectacular style with the most lucrative tournament cricket has ever seen.

There’s no doubt that Twenty20 and the IPL in particular have revitalised cricket, attracting a whole new audience to the game and providing a level of financial reward rarely seen outside of football. However you can have too much of a good thing and the game’s administrators need to be careful that the Twenty20 format doesn’t stray down the same path as 50 over cricket. International cricket in recent years has become a year-long treadmill with too many meaningless one-day matches featuring players simply going through the motions.

The IPL 2010 will be held from March-April

These thoughts came to mind when I saw the provisional 2010 schedule (it will be made concrete in a few months). The plan is to hold the IPL a month earlier than usual, straight after India’s February tour to South Africa. This means the tournament will run from March-April with most of the matches taking place in March. The reason for shifting it back in the calendar is because the World Twenty20 is being held from April-May and those who run the game want to squeeze in as much cricket before the summer test series and ODIs kick off in England.

There are plans for 2 IPL tournaments a year

If the IPL’s commissioner Lalit Modit has his way we could soon be saturated with international Twenty20 cricket. Modit is planning two IPL tournaments per year, with the second a shorter version possibly aiming to tap into the markets in the USA and Canada where cricket doesn’t really appear on the sporting radar. If you add to that the English version of the IPL (the P20) and the Southern Premier League involving Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, both starting from next year plus the many domestic competitions and you’re soon going to have a backlog of matches.

It’s good news for the many new fans of the game but something is going to have to give. It used to be possible for players to continue to compete internationally till their late 30s but with the current schedule most are likely to be injury ravaged long before then with Andrew Flintoff a prime example. With test cricket surely to remain untouchable, if changes are to be made the likelihood is the decline of 50 over cricket which has been coming for a while. The sparse audiences for the last World Cup in 2007 told their own story and there are serious question marks whether there’s still a place for it.

On the positive side though next year’s IPL is planned to be bigger and better than before. Modit was encouraged by the success of the tournament this year after moving the location to South Africa but the 2010 event is very likely to be back in India again. There will be more teams and English players will be allowed to compete from the start with the likes of Kevin Pietersen, Ravi Boparra and Andrew Flintoff likely to be in high demand.

By David Cox, Twenty20Blog.co.uk