PlanetCricket
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- Joined
- Jan 13, 2010
Article by Andy Sugden -
Have you had enough T20 yet? Why, it only seems like yesterday that Sussex were holding the Twenty:20 Cup trophy aloft at Edgbaston, yet between then and now we’ve had the first Champions League T20, various T20 international series, the IPL and, indeed, the World T20 itself. Now, the domestic Twenty:20 Cup, renamed the Friends Provident T20, is back again, but with so much T20 cricket going on now, does anyone care?
Yes. Some people do, myself being one of those. I’m happy that the domestic T20 is back, and I’ll tell you for why. There is really nothing quite like getting behind your own team in 3 hours of cricket entertainment, that at points makes you want to kill yourself or other people or hug just about everybody you see. You see? I admit I was behind Yardy and the lads in the CLT20 in India, but I only got two matches, which ended in the most spectacular way possible with Rory Hamilton-Brown being bowled in his last act as a Sussex player. The problem was that I wasn’t there, and there was no-one to share my anguish with.I admit I then dabbled in the IPL. I picked my team early. I looked at all the squads, and decided that I was backing the Kolkata Knight Riders. I watched them. I clapped when they won (all too rarely) and cheered the other team when they lost. But the connection was never there. They were never the boys that I had been supporting from the start. It wasn’t the star names they were lacking, they had plenty, beating away Dwayne Smith, Luke Wright, Matt Prior and Yasir Arafat from my mind, but they were lacking the squad players, Chris Nash, Ed Joyce, James Kirtley, Robin Martin-Jenkins, that I had grown up with, had seen happy, had seen sad, had seen depressed and ecstatic. It didn’t feel as if the Kolkata Knight Riders were living the IPL with me. It felt like I was living it for them.
I enjoyed the World T20. I enjoyed that for a different reason. I enjoyed it because England were good. Very good. I was there again, watching on my TV screen, hoping that my local heroes, Luke Wright and Michael Yardy, could become greats of the game and win the T20 trophy for their country. They managed it, and I was happy with that. My country had won something, at last, after all these years of waiting. But it wasn’t as good as winning that county T20 title. Not many things compare to that.
I was back at Hove last night, the 1st of June, 2010. Sussex picked up where they left off in 2009. Beating Somerset by over 50 runs, with great bowling by James Kirtley, Michael Yardy and Yasir Arafat. Not a bunch of hired hands from all four corners of the globe. Even Arafat and Dwayne Smith, the two overseas players, are like old friends, as I’ve seen them in agony and I’ve seen them in ecstasy. And at Hove last night I fell in love again, with a mistress that I know will spite me, if not this year almost certainly next, but I don’t care, because for the amount of fun I’ll get along the way it’s almost certainly worth it. I also refuse to carry on with that analogy. I don’t say this often, but thank you, ECB, for releasing Twenty20 onto the domestic scene. Thank you, ECB, for refusing to give in to a franchise based system. Thank you, ECB, for keeping everything the same and yet oh so spectacularly different.
When I started writing this article, I intended to do a side-by-side comparison of last year’s final and yesterday’s match. I started writing and I didn’t stop. I ended up with a play-by-play of the T20 I’ve watched since that final last year. I couldn’t care less. The FPT20 promises to be what T20 is truly about. Having fun.
Now, where did my mistress go?
More...
Have you had enough T20 yet? Why, it only seems like yesterday that Sussex were holding the Twenty:20 Cup trophy aloft at Edgbaston, yet between then and now we’ve had the first Champions League T20, various T20 international series, the IPL and, indeed, the World T20 itself. Now, the domestic Twenty:20 Cup, renamed the Friends Provident T20, is back again, but with so much T20 cricket going on now, does anyone care?
Yes. Some people do, myself being one of those. I’m happy that the domestic T20 is back, and I’ll tell you for why. There is really nothing quite like getting behind your own team in 3 hours of cricket entertainment, that at points makes you want to kill yourself or other people or hug just about everybody you see. You see? I admit I was behind Yardy and the lads in the CLT20 in India, but I only got two matches, which ended in the most spectacular way possible with Rory Hamilton-Brown being bowled in his last act as a Sussex player. The problem was that I wasn’t there, and there was no-one to share my anguish with.I admit I then dabbled in the IPL. I picked my team early. I looked at all the squads, and decided that I was backing the Kolkata Knight Riders. I watched them. I clapped when they won (all too rarely) and cheered the other team when they lost. But the connection was never there. They were never the boys that I had been supporting from the start. It wasn’t the star names they were lacking, they had plenty, beating away Dwayne Smith, Luke Wright, Matt Prior and Yasir Arafat from my mind, but they were lacking the squad players, Chris Nash, Ed Joyce, James Kirtley, Robin Martin-Jenkins, that I had grown up with, had seen happy, had seen sad, had seen depressed and ecstatic. It didn’t feel as if the Kolkata Knight Riders were living the IPL with me. It felt like I was living it for them.
I enjoyed the World T20. I enjoyed that for a different reason. I enjoyed it because England were good. Very good. I was there again, watching on my TV screen, hoping that my local heroes, Luke Wright and Michael Yardy, could become greats of the game and win the T20 trophy for their country. They managed it, and I was happy with that. My country had won something, at last, after all these years of waiting. But it wasn’t as good as winning that county T20 title. Not many things compare to that.
I was back at Hove last night, the 1st of June, 2010. Sussex picked up where they left off in 2009. Beating Somerset by over 50 runs, with great bowling by James Kirtley, Michael Yardy and Yasir Arafat. Not a bunch of hired hands from all four corners of the globe. Even Arafat and Dwayne Smith, the two overseas players, are like old friends, as I’ve seen them in agony and I’ve seen them in ecstasy. And at Hove last night I fell in love again, with a mistress that I know will spite me, if not this year almost certainly next, but I don’t care, because for the amount of fun I’ll get along the way it’s almost certainly worth it. I also refuse to carry on with that analogy. I don’t say this often, but thank you, ECB, for releasing Twenty20 onto the domestic scene. Thank you, ECB, for refusing to give in to a franchise based system. Thank you, ECB, for keeping everything the same and yet oh so spectacularly different.
When I started writing this article, I intended to do a side-by-side comparison of last year’s final and yesterday’s match. I started writing and I didn’t stop. I ended up with a play-by-play of the T20 I’ve watched since that final last year. I couldn’t care less. The FPT20 promises to be what T20 is truly about. Having fun.
Now, where did my mistress go?
More...
