T10 will eventually be huge. Of course, it will take some time and a similar amount of lobbying, but there’s no doubt that the T10 cricket league that we all thoroughly enjoyed last weekend was not just a flash in the pan.
The doubts over T10 are as understandable as they’re addressable. Most of these emanate from the same line of thinking that slashed question marks over T20 cricket when it was first ushered in 14 years ago.
It took T20 four years and one ICC World Cup to make its mark, resulting in the franchise cricket that was spearheaded by the Indian Premier League. Not only that, unlike the initial exclusivity that T20 had to deal with when it came to any innovations – the free hit, for instance – T10 comes at a time when even Test cricket has to be revamped to broaden the interest level beyond the purists’ orthodox liking.
Shoaib Malik and Luke Ronchi
So at a time when the pink ball and day-and-night matches are being used to attract crowds towards Test cricket, wherein any modifications were long considered sacrilegious, T10 sells itself by offering the very best bits of T20 and ODI cricket in around 90 minutes – perfectly in line with a football, hockey or basketball contest.
So if T10 is indeed such a shoo-in for success, why didn’t it resonate like the PSL for instance, even though the Pakistani contingent was there?
There are quite a few reasons for that, but let’s start with the most obvious ones first.
Even though action worth a couple of weeks was squeezed into four days, it’s still not enough time to reach out to a wider audience. So while the T10 league would have started echoing around cricketing circles around Thursday and Friday, by the time it would have been on the verge of catching on, the tournament was over on Sunday.
This, of course, is strictly for the international audience. For, the Sharjah cricket buffs did not disappoint with the crowds brimming over across the four days.
Shahid Afridi
This T10 blitz wasn’t intended to be representative of how T10 leagues would shape up – let’s make no mistake about that. This was just the appetiser to what might lie in store; and hence when the format catches on, expect franchises and leagues themselves to have a bit more identity and prolonged offerings.
While naming teams after Pakhtoon, Kerala, Maratha, Punjabi, Bengalis and Sri Lankans was a good selling point to attract loyalty from the various communities in the Emirates, that Kerala and Maratha barely had any Indians – let alone representatives from the communities – obviously backfired.
Virendra Sehwag was the only noteworthy Indian presence in the league – on the field that is – and he too took the idea of making easy money far too literally, barely seen throughout the tournament.
With better representation, and yes ideally more representation from India, these franchises and the T10 league would definitely grow. But the league would have to get a bigger window for itself, because a 4-day tournament once a year, no matter how action-packed it might be, just won’t resonate with the masses and in turn the investors backing it.
During the draft
But more than this particular attempt at franchising T10, it’s the format itself that is definitely here to stay.
T10 would do to T20 what the latter had done to ODI cricket. While T20 almost threatened the existence of ODIs by slashing question marks over the existence of the 15-35 overs period, T10 is putting similar doubts over the 6-14 overs in T20s.
In short, building innings and reconstructions are out of the window. It’s wallop from ball one to the sixtieth.
Even so, while the 20-over format still worked perfectly with a 10-wicket innings, there still are questions over how a 10-over shootout with 10 wickets in hands works as a contest, especially with regards to team compositions.
Throughout the T10 league for instance, teams often lost three or less wickets in 10 overs, and with most of the power hitters pushed up, the lower order – usually the hitting forte in T20s and ODIs – was made superfluous.
However, similar questions were raised over T20 and there is no reason why T10 can’t coexist with all of the longer formats. Once branded properly, T10 would take off and once the money comes in, ICC would jump aboard the bandwagon as well.
That T10 could be cricket’s representative at Olympics and other international events is no longer a pipedream.
