Twenty years on, how T20 has transformed the game

In the first 50 years or so of its existence, cricket didn't change much. It remained textbook.

- Somshuvra Laha

KOLKATA:

Next fifty years, it tried to keep up with the times — covered pitches, helmets for batters, six-ball overs, no rest days — but nothing too over the top.

One-day cricket arrived with coloured clothing, white balls, dark sight screens and multiple camera angles but it still hadn't started tinkering with the game for a good 20 years.

Seismic, however, were the changes the game underwent after T20 waded into the scene.

All very innocuously of course. Remember the first T20 International between Australia and New Zealand in 2005? Players wearing floppy hats, aviators and retro style shirts, making it seem very much a casual one-off affair, T20 was a format no one felt could have had a foreseeable future.

But the first ICC T20 World Cup was held in two years. In another year, the IPL. First match, and the format had already jolted the foundations of the game. No one realised that better than Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer as they looked trapped in the hangover of one-day cricket, trying to muster a response to Brendon McCullum's scintillating 73-ball 158. That set the tone to the overhaul of cricket.