Why T20 Should Take Bite Out Of Big Mac

Twenty 20 cricket is often accused of being just a shorter, flashier form of the real game – just another fast food sugar rush.

 

- Isabelle Westbury

 The explosion in the number of T20 tournaments has brought warnings that the fixture list is now saturated, each game worth less and less. It is harder to recall an individual T20 than it is a Test, but as the Indian board’s coffers know, that is not the only measure of success. Still, despite financial and ratings triumph, T20 retains a tag of inferiority. Justification for this, however, is becoming harder.

The first professional T20 matches were modest events, spread out across county grounds up and down England on an innocuous day in June 2003. The initial assessment was one of moderate, not overwhelming, success.

In similar fashion, the opening of the McDonald brothers’ first restaurant in 1937 in California was a modest affair. After a decade of moderate returns and condescension from across the gastronomic world, a refocus and specialisation (hamburgers, not driveins) saw them conquer America within a decade – and the world soon after. By the early Nineties the market was deemed saturated, but a McDonald’s decline never came.

The brand still has its critics, but it is a global success, executing its particular skills better than anyone else, through a recognisable and well co-ordinated franchise. It is a franchise that is also enduring.

The McDonald’s blueprint is one that T20 would do well to exploit. The format will always have its detractors, but they can be ignored for falling outside its target market. Test cricket demands a specific set of skills, but so does T20 – just a different set.