TWENTY20 CRICKET – FAST AND FURIOUS By now, you may have realised that some words in cricket have a duality of names and meaning. You can run between the wickets or stumps for as long as the fielder has not thrown the ball back in to break the stumps or the wickets. Confused now?
There are boundaries that act as limits to the playing field, and if the ball bounces before crossing the boundary, you will automatically get four runs. If the ball goes over the boundary, you get six runs automatically - a type of bonus score.
There are several ways to get out a batsman. Firstly, you can bowl them by hitting their stumps. Or, if they hit the ball in the air, you can catch it before it hits the ground. You can ‘run them out’ by throwing the bowl at the stumps while they are running between the stumps. Another way is ‘LBW’, which is purposely preventing the ball from hitting the wicket or the stumps with your leg (covered with pads, hopefully). Or finally, a batsman can be struck and made to retire injured, although he can come back later and resume his innings.
Also called T20, Twenty20 cricket is a shortened form of the game that has taken the cricketing world by storm. Introduced in 2003 with an emphasis on hitting and scoring, it has made cricket fast, furious and instant. Thanks to this, it has gained a whole new audience, especially for the younger crowd for whom a five-day-long Test match can simply be too long. Although some purists of the game aren’t so keen on T20, the general feeling is that anything that encourages people to take an interest in cricket can only be good. The game is played on a standard cricket ground with traditional one-day rules, with some exceptions. Bowling teams are forced to complete their 20 overs (120 balls) inside the 75-minute time limit, meaning they have an average of three minutes and 45 seconds per over. England was the first country to officially adopt a T20 tournament back in 2003, and today, all major nations have their own domestic T20 competitions. The Caribbean is no exception. The Caribbean Premier League is an annual month-long T20 cricket tournament that combines a colourful carnival experience with the region’s most loved sport. The West Indies are the only team that has won the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup twice since its inauguration in 2007. And since the 2024 World Cup is to be hosted jointly by the West Indies and the United States, interest in this thrilling game can only be on the rise.
In a nutshell, if my team scores one hundred runs and your team scores a hundred and one runs, you win the game!
By Patterson Thompson
ISSUE 13 • APRIL 2022
39
