The Incredible, Shrinking Game

T20s have simplified the game, reduced it to its primary colours, bleached it of some of the cunning and subtlety and skill that made Test cricket such a sophisticated contest

- Mukul Kesavan

WATCHING the Indian Premier League (IPL) final between Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) and Punjab Kings (PBKS), I saw why sunlight matters. The T20 game is the only form of cricket where the whole match is played out at night. In daytime cricket, the stadium is an extension of the world outside, shone upon by a shared sun. Test cricket as a spectacle tries to fake a village pastoral, complete with blue skies, green sward, and yeomen in white.

Night cricket is played in a shiny bubble made for entertainment. The IPL's nocturnal aesthetic embraces gaudiness with its gilt pads, shiny cheerleaders and huckster emcees trying to crank up the excitement. The IPL has invented a simplified, sixer-happy version of the game where pehalwan hitters perform for look-at-me stadium fans and look-at-anything television audiences trying to escape the alienation of their working lives. The IPL is a two-month, 74 episode soap with a guaranteed climax.

Visually, the RCB-PBKS final was a hot mess. Both teams wore red, making colour-coded partisanship hard for irregular spectators like me. It was a frustrating episode where the nominated star, Virat Kohli, played a hesitant, halting T20 innings, scoring just 43 runs in 35 balls and won, while Shashank Singh produced a T20 masterclass, scoring 61 unbeaten runs in 30 balls with six sixes, and lost. Jio Hotstar did its best to make us feel the significance of the moment: after 18 loyal years with RCB, Kohli had finally won the IPL. We were meant to care.