T20: As Unpredictable As Weather
England: Five different winners in six years. There were nine separate finalists—out of a possible 12 for six years.
South Africa: Four different winners in five years. There were seven separate finalists.
Australia: Two different winners in four years, but Victoria won three times in a row. Four different finalists, out of a possible 8. Victoria reached all four finals and faced three different opponents.
***
In times fraught with uncertainty in their core industries, business and movie idols have turned to cricket for solace, profit or enhancement of ego. They want constancy and cash from Twenty20 cricket, but they could be backing the wrong game. Cricket, it's said, is beset with 'glorious uncertainties'; in the drastically contracted format of Twenty20, the uncertainties multiply.
In this form of the game, in a matter of days, Rajasthan can be bowled out for 58 and then score 211, the highest and lowest totals of IPL-2. Anil Kumble can take five wickets for five runs in one match and follow it up with five (for 165 runs) in the next seven. Yuvraj Singh can take a hat-trick and score a 50 in one game and still lose. Yusuf Abdulla can be much more successful than Zaheer Khan, Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne. Brendon McCullum, hitter of 10 fours and 13 sixers in the first match of IPL-1, can end up with three fours and five sixers after eight matches this year. The anonymous, inexpensive Abhishek Nayar can smite Andrew Flintoff, the most expensive IPL player, for three sixers in one over. And the ageing Rahul Dravid, having opted to not play T20 for India, can completely outshine the high-priced Kevin Pietersen, the big flop of the event this year.
Form isn't a factor, really. When you bat with manic impetuosity right from the first ball, you're going against the game's tenets. The players know this. Last year, Andrew Symonds said, "Twenty20 can be bad for the ego." The IPL team owners should know—if they are looking for certitude, they shouldn't venture into Twenty20 cricket because it's a minefield of uncertainty.
Twenty20 is still an infant, yet there's enough evidence to say that in this format, only uncertainty is a constant. The longest running T20 tournament, the English Twenty20 Cup, has had six editions and there have been five separate winners and nine separate finalists. In South Africa's T20 tournament, there have been four different winners in five years. From Australia, though, comes a sliver of constancy: two separate winners in four years. Victoria have reached all four finals, winning three times in a row.
Fans and analysts agonise over the inexplicable form of cricketers that ebbs and flows with alarming rapidity. As a senior Indian player says, T20 isn't open to analysis. "There's no need to analyse this kind of cricket," he says. "It's fun, and we try our best, but in the middle, things happen fast. You need to keep your wits about you. That's the best you can do. Since the game is so short, any player can come up with something crazily impossible."
Contraction of playing time, indeed, is the greatest leveller in Twenty20. The low number of balls available to all players bridges the gap between, say, Kevin Pietersen and Dwayne Smith. That's why, despite immense pressures from team owners, players don't mope over their failures for too long a time. "That's the nature of the game, fortunes fluctuate wildly and anything can happen on any day. We prepare hardest for Tests, where our skills are tested most," says an Indian player who's played for the country in all forms of the game.
Twenty20 is not a many-nuanced battle. It's akin to a duel with pistols, a game of chance, not a battle of strategy. Team owners need to understand this.