A big hit at the matches is the jacuzzi. Here, two maidens check out the action beyond the boundary.
Meanwhile, total attendance at Twenty20 matches has crossed a quarter of a million. The total prize money is £108,000, with £42,000 for the winners. The matches have earned the counties millions. The average attendance for Benson & Hedges matches last year was 1,511. Twenty20 has averaged 5,330 a match. For county matches, that's a near-riot. At last, there was some real movement in the turnstiles.
"I don't like cricket...I love it!" goes a 'Dreadlock Holiday' remix by the group United Colours of Sound. You can't get those twentysomethings without going pop. The matches at Leicester have a free disco to follow. And a careful song mix of old and new for every four, six and wicket. As Sussex coach Peter Moores says, "We are in the entertainment business."
The group Mis-Teeq performed at the June 13 opener between Hampshire Hawks and Sussex Sharks (Twenty20 adores alliteration). Atomic Kitten will perform during the finals at Trent Bridge, when one semi-final will be played in the morning, the other in the afternoon, and the final in the evening. Not even football ever managed that kind of action in a day.
The pace of the game is intoxicating though not exactly a slog exercise with 170-180 runs being the usual score. "I completely reject any suggestions that the finer points of the game are lost in the Twenty20 matches," says Mark Hudson of the ECB. "One of the nice things about cricket is that it has room for everything from 20 overs a side to a five-day match."
The series could even improve the English cricketers' game, trying as they are to match the Aussie aggression. "Twenty20 cricket is a great opportunity for younger guys to come into an intense environment and understand how to play in a pressure situation," says ex-South African Test cricketer Jonty Rhodes, now with the Gloucestershire Gladiators.
Meanwhile, the purists who were shocked by the non-white of the one-dayers are gagging on their gin and tonic, just looking at the splash of colours the players tunnel into. Every player gets into three bright colours, and then gets into a real hurry about everything. Only the white of the ball reminds you of days gone by.
"My big problem with the competition is that I have no time to take notes," says a cricket correspondent. A match is over in under three hours, no more than 90 seconds allowed between the fall of a wicket and the next batsman facing the next ball, ballboys around the boundary to return fours and sixes...the game of leisure as a game in a hurry. The worst you can say of it is that it is a kind of cricket. And the best part, the number of people saying it's my kind of cricket.
So why did the grand finale go to Trent Bridge up in Nottingham? Why didn't Lord's opt to host the final? Too uppity for Twenty20, were they? Forget it. They were desperate to host the final. It's just that British bureaucracy stopped them. The local Westminster council ruled that Twenty20 is entertainment and not just cricket, and Lord's does not hold a licence for entertainment.
