Twenty20


Twenty20 cricket or Twenty-20, is a shortened format of cricket. At the professional level, it was originally introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2003 for the inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two teams have a single innings each, which is restricted to a maximum of 20 overs. Together with first-class and List A cricket, Twenty20 is one of the three current forms of cricket recognised by the International Cricket Council as being at the highest international or domestic level.
A typical Twenty20 game is completed in about three hours, with each inning lasting around 90 minutes and an official 10-minute break between the innings. This is much shorter than previous forms of the game, and is closer to the timespan of other popular team sports. It was introduced to create a fast-paced game that would be attractive to spectators at the ground and viewers on television.
The game has succeeded in spreading around the cricket world. On most international tours there is at least one Twenty20 match and all Test-playing nations have a domestic cup competition. West Indies are the reigning world champions, winning the 2016 competition.

History

Origins

When the Benson & Hedges Cup ended in 2002, the ECB needed another one day competition to fill its place. Cricketing authorities were looking to boost the game's popularity with the younger generation in response to dwindling crowds and reduced sponsorship. It was intended to deliver fast-paced, exciting cricket accessible to thousands of fans who were put off by the longer versions of the game. Stuart Robertson, the marketing manager of the ECB, proposed a 20 over per innings game to county chairmen in 2001 and they voted 11–7 in favour of adopting the new format.
The first official Twenty20 matches were played on 13 June 2003 between the English counties in the Twenty20 Cup. The first season of Twenty20 in England was a relative success, with the Surrey Lions defeating the Warwickshire Bears by 9 wickets in the final to claim the title. The first Twenty20 match held at Lord's, on 15 July 2004 between Middlesex and Surrey, attracted a crowd of 27,509, the highest attendance for any county cricket game at the ground – other than a one-day final – since 1953.

Spread worldwide

Thirteen teams from different parts of the country participated in Pakistan's inaugural competition in 2004, with Faisalabad Wolves the first winners. On 12 January 2005 Australia's first Twenty20 game was played at the WACA Ground between the Western Warriors and the Victorian Bushrangers. It drew a sell-out crowd of 20,000, which was the first one in nearly 25 years.
Starting on 11 July 2006, 19 West Indies regional teams competed in what was named the Stanford 20/20 tournament. The event was financially backed by billionaire Allen Stanford, who gave at least US$28,000,000 in funding money. It was intended that the tournament would be an annual event. Guyana won the inaugural event, defeating Trinidad and Tobago by 5 wickets, securing US$1,000,000 in prize money.
On 5 January 2007 Queensland Bulls played the New South Wales Blues at The Gabba, Brisbane. An unexpected 16,000 fans turned up on the day to buy tickets, causing Gabba staff to throw open gates and grant many fans free entry. Attendance reached 27,653. For the February 2008 Twenty20 match between Australia and India, 85,824 people attended the match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, involving the Twenty20 World Champions against the ODI World Champions.
The Stanford Super Series was held in October 2008 between three teams. The respective winners of the English and Caribbean Twenty20 competitions, Middlesex and Trinidad and Tobago, and a Stanford Superstars team formed from West Indies domestic players. Trinidad and Tobago won the competition, securing US$280,000 prize money. On 1 November, the Stanford Superstars played England in what was expected to be the first of five fixtures in as many years with the winner claiming US$20,000,000 in each match. The Stanford Superstars won the first match, however no further fixtures were held as Allen Stanford was charged with fraud in 2009.

T20 leagues

Several T20 leagues started after the popularity of the 2007 ICC World Twenty20. The Board of Control for Cricket in India started the Indian Premier League in 2008, which utilizes the North American sports franchise system with eight teams in major Indian markets, and is currently in its twelfth season of competition. In September 2017, the broadcasting and digital rights for the next five years of the IPL were sold to Star India for US$2.55 billion, making it one of the world's most lucrative sports league per match. The IPL has seen a spike in its brand valuation to US$5.3 billion after the 10th edition, according to global valuation and corporate finance advisor Duff & Phelps.
The Big Bash League, Bangladesh Premier League, Pakistan Super League, and Caribbean Premier League started thereafter, following similar formulae, and remained popular with the fans. The Women's Big Bash League was started in 2015 by Cricket Australia, while the Kia Super League was started in England and Wales in 2016.The Mzansi Super League in South Africa was started in 2018.

Twenty20 Internationals

The first Twenty20 International match was held on 5 August 2004 between England and New Zealand women's teams with New Zealand winning by nine runs.
On 17 February 2005 Australia defeated New Zealand in the first men's international Twenty20 match, played at Eden Park in Auckland. The game was played in a light-hearted manner – both sides turned out in kit similar to that worn in the 1980s, the New Zealand team's a direct copy of that worn by the Beige Brigade. Some of the players also sported mustaches/beards and hairstyles popular in the 1980s taking part in a competition amongst themselves for best retro look, at the request of the Beige Brigade. Australia won the game comprehensively, and as the result became obvious towards the end of the NZ innings, the players and umpires took things less seriously – Glenn McGrath jokingly replayed the Trevor Chappell underarm incident from a 1981 ODI between the two sides, and Billy Bowden showed him a mock red card in response.
The first Twenty20 international in England was played between England and Australia at the Rose Bowl in Hampshire on 13 June 2005, which England won by a margin of 100 runs, a record victory which lasted until 2007.
On 9 January 2006 Australia and South Africa met in the first international Twenty20 game in Australia. In a first, each player's nickname appeared on the back of his uniform, rather than his surname. The international match drew a crowd of 38,894 people at The Gabba.
On 16 February 2006 New Zealand defeated West Indies in a tie-breaking bowl-out 3–0; 126 runs were scored apiece in the game proper. The game was the last international match played by Chris Cairns.
Every two years an ICC World Twenty20 tournament is to take place, except in the event of an ICC Cricket World Cup being scheduled in the same year, in which case it will be held the year before. The first tournament was in 2007 in South Africa where India defeated Pakistan in the final. Two Associate teams had played in the first tournament, selected through the 2007 ICC World Cricket League Division One, a 50-over competition. In December 2007 it was decided to hold a qualifying tournament with a 20-over format to better prepare the teams. With six participants, two would qualify for the 2009 World Twenty20 and would each receive $250,000 in prize money. The second tournament was won by Pakistan who beat Sri Lanka by 8 wickets in England on 21 June 2009. The 2010 ICC World Twenty20 tournament was held in the West Indies in May 2010, where England defeated Australia by 7 wickets. The 2012 ICC World Twenty20 was won by the West Indies, by defeating Sri Lanka at the finals. It was the first time in cricket history when a T20 World Cup tournament took place in an Asian country. The 2014 ICC World Twenty20 was won by Sri Lanka, by defeating India at the finals, where the tournament was held in Bangladesh. The 2016 ICC World Twenty20 was won by West-Indies.

Impact on the game

Twenty20 cricket is claimed to have resulted in a more athletic and explosive form of cricket. Indian fitness coach Ramji Srinivasan declared in an interview with the Indian fitness website Takath.com, that Twenty20 had "raised the bar" in terms of fitness levels for all players, demanding higher levels of strength, speed, agility and reaction time from all players regardless of role in the team. Matthew Hayden credited retirement from international cricket with aiding his performance in general and fitness in particular in the Indian Premier League.
In June 2009, speaking at the annual Cowdrey Lecture at Lord's, former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist pushed for Twenty20 to be made an Olympic sport. "It would," he said, "be difficult to see a better, quicker or cheaper way of spreading the game throughout the world."
Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting, on the other hand, has criticized Twenty20 as being detrimental to Test cricket and for hampering batsmen's scoring skills and concentration. Former Australian captain Greg Chappell made similar complaints, fearing that young players would play too much T20 and not develop their batting skills fully, while former England player Alex Tudor feared the same for bowling skills.
Former West Indies captains Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding and Garfield Sobers criticised Twenty20 for its role in discouraging players from representing their test cricket national side, with many West Indies players like Chris Gayle, Sunil Narine and Dwayne Bravo preferring instead to play in a Twenty20 franchise elsewhere in the world and make far more money.

Match format and rules

Format

Twenty20 match format is a form of limited overs cricket in that it involves two teams, each with a single innings, the key feature is that each team bats for a maximum of 20 overs. In terms of visual format, the batting team members do not arrive from and depart to traditional dressing rooms, but come and go from a bench visible in the playing arena, analogous to association football's technical area or a baseball dugout.
, in front of a 28,000-strong crowd

General rules

The Laws of cricket apply to Twenty20, with major exceptions:
Currently, if the match ends with the scores tied and there must be a winner, the tie is broken with a one over per side Eliminator or Super Over:
Each team nominates three batsmen and one bowler to play a one-over per side "mini-match". The team which bats second in the match bats first in the Super Over. In turn, each side bats one over bowled by the one nominated opposition bowler, with their innings over if they lose two wickets before the over is completed. The side with the higher score from their Super Over wins.
If the super over also ends up in a tie, the team that has scored the most boundaries in the 20 overs wins.
In the Australian domestic competition the Big Bash League the Super Over is played slightly differently, with no 2-wicket limit, and if the super over is also tied then a "" is used, with scores after the fifth ball for each team being used to determine the result. If it is still tied, then the countback goes to 4 balls and so on. The latest Super Over to decide a match was between the Sydney Sixers winning against the Brisbane Heat on 25 January 2017, in the Big Bash League at the Brisbane Cricket Ground, with the Sixers winning 0/22 to 0/15 in the Super Over after tying on 164.
Tied Twenty20 matches were previously decided by a bowl-out.

International

and men's Twenty20 Internationals have been played since 2004 and 2005 respectively. To date, 76 nations have played the format, including all test playing nations.
NationDate of men's T20I debutDate of women's T20I debut
17 February 20052 September 2005
17 February 20055 August 2004
13 June 20055 August 2004
21 October 200510 August 2007
16 February 200627 June 2008
15 June 200612 June 2009
28 August 200625 May 2009
28 November 200627 August 2012
28 November 20065 January 2019
1 December 20065 August 2006
1 September 20076 April 2019
12 September 20077 July 2018
2 August 200827 June 2008
2 August 200827 June 2008
2 August 200817 May 2019
3 August 2008
2 February 2010
16 March 201412 January 2019
16 March 201412 January 2019
17 March 20147 July 2018
15 July 20157 July 2018
25 July 2015
20 August 2018
20 August 2018
3 November 2018
3 November 2018
12 January 2019
12 January 2019
13 January 2019
20 January 2019
20 January 2019
20 January 201918 February 2019
20 January 2019
21 January 2019
26 January 2019
15 March 201917 May 2019
22 March 2019
22 March 20196 May 2019
29 March 2019
29 March 2019
25 April 201923 August 2018
25 April 2019
25 April 201926 April 2019
25 April 2019
6 May 2019
6 May 2019
6 May 2019
11 May 2019
11 May 201926 June 2019
20 May 20197 July 2018
20 May 201926 January 2019
20 May 2019
20 May 201920 August 2018
20 May 201920 August 2018
25 May 2019
31 May 201931 May 2019
31 May 201931 May 2019
15 June 201931 July 2019
16 June 2019
18 June 2019
24 June 20193 June 2018
24 June 20193 June 2018
8 July 20196 May 2019
13 July 2019
22 July 20199 August 2018
31 July 2019
18 August 2019
29 August 201931 July 2019
29 August 2019
29 August 2019
29 August 2019
30 August 2019
3 October 20193 October 2019
3 October 201923 August 2018
3 October 201923 August 2018
3 October 20193 October 2019
14 October 2019
14 October 2019
15 October 2019
25 October 2019
26 October 2019
6 November 201920 August 2018
6 November 201920 August 2018

T20 International rankings

In November 2011, the ICC released the first Twenty20 International rankings for the men's game, based on the same system as the Test and ODI rankings. The rankings cover a 2 to 3-year period, with matches since the most recent 1 August weighted fully, matches in the preceding 12 months weighted two-thirds, and matches in the 12 months preceding that weighted one-third. To qualify for the rankings, teams must have played at least eight Twenty20 Internationals in the ranking period.
Until 2018, the ICC did not maintain a separate Twenty20 ranking for the women's game, instead aggregating performance over all three forms of the game into one overall women's teams ranking. However, in October, the ICC announced that the women's ranking would be split between ODIs and T20Is, and released both tables shortly thereafter.

Domestic

This is a list of the current Twenty20 domestic competitions in several of the leading cricket countries.
CountryDomestic Competition/sNumber of Teams
AfghanistanAfghanistan Premier League5
AustraliaBig Bash League8
BangladeshBangladesh Premier League8
CanadaGlobal T20 Canada6
EnglandVitality Blast18
Hong KongHong Kong T20 Blitz5
IndiaIndian Premier League, Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy8, 37
IrelandInter-Provincial Trophy4
NetherlandsDutch Twenty20 Cup16
NepalEverest Premier League, Dhangadhi Premier League, Pokhara Premier League6, 6, 6
New ZealandSuper Smash6
PakistanPakistan Super League, National T20 Cup6, 6
ScotlandRegional Pro Series3
South AfricaRam Slam T20 Challenge, Mzansi Super League6, 6
Sri LankaLankan Premier League, Sri Lanka Premier League6,24
West IndiesCaribbean Premier League6
ZimbabweStanbic Bank 20 Series4