Review: Twenty:20****

Here's irony for you: a play that celebrates the ebb, flow and drama of a test match against the here one moment gone the next-ness of the short form of cricket – and the major complaint is that it is over too quickly.

Twenty:20 is James Quinn's cricket play, but in truth it is a love letter to the summer game, disguised as a play. Scarborough holds an annual festival dedicated to the truly beautiful game, so there can be no more apt place for this piece to be performed.

Quinn creates two characters to allow a debate between the merits of the ever-shortening form of the game in the modern world and the sort of cricket played in the past. Rick Fielding is a superstar of Twenty20. A freak snooker accident leaves Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood ill on the morning of the final Ashes test of 2013. England only need a draw, and, bereft of other choices, Fielding has been called up to the test team. Blogging, texting and mobile phoning from the England dressing room, Fielding's total lack of respect for the game's traditions stick in the throat of the only other man in the changing room – Len Turner, who announces himself "the ghost of cricket past". Quinn's play could very easily become a debate about the way the game is headed but what creates much of the drama is the cricket itself.

You will, if you love the game, find moments where it is difficult to contain yourself from jumping up and shouting. Full of humour and heart, this is a play for anyone who loves cricket.

To Sept 11.