Chris Waters on why cricket just going crazy over this here-today, gone-tomorrow stuff

Or, in the case of T20 franchise cricket, different strokes for different folks, maybe.

For some folks love it, and some folks hate it, and I sit firmly in the latter camp.

Try as I might (not that I’ve ever tried particularly hard), I cannot get interested in the Indian Premier League, the Big Bash League, the Caribbean Premier League, the Bangladesh Premier League, the Pakistan Super League, and so on.

Why, if you asked me to name the reigning champions in each tournament, how long each league has been going for, what all the teams names are, etcetera, I would give you a blank stare before spontaneously combusting.

The “Multan Sultans”, the “St Lucia Zouks”, the “Chattogram Challengers”... it’s all gibberish to me, the cricketing equivalent of white noise.

I know nothing about such teams and have no desire to increase my comprehension.

Ignorance is bliss, as Thomas Gray observed.

Cricket, it strikes me increasingly, is now, at the least, two different sports.

Some people like everything there is to like about its various entities; others, myself included, primarily have eyes for “traditional cricket”.

Give me a Test match (preferably at Trent Bridge), a County Championship game (preferably at Scarborough), and possibly a 50-over game or two thrown in (but only one or two), and I am as happy as a pig in muck.

Give me a constant diet of T20 franchise matches, however, and I am as unhappy as a pig in an abattoir, for I have no interest in, or affinity with, such superficial concepts.

As a cricket writer, someone who loves the game, I am almost embarrassed by my complete and utter indifference to the IPL, the BBL, the CPL, and so on. Almost, but not quite...

For I feel I have a duty, a professional obligation, to call it out for what it is – essentially, a money-making exercise.

When I ventured such opinions on Twitter recently, if that is not too much of an intelluctual contradiction, I was heartened by the fact that several cricket writers agreed and also that one eminent commentator, who shall remain nameless, got in touch privately afterwards to say that he felt the same despite having worked on such competitions.

Although I don’t dislike our T20 Blast (probably because I do at least have some affinity with the teams, most obviously Yorkshire), I still think there are far too many matches and that the tournament could do with a short, back and sides.

Pretty soon, though, we will have our own T20 franchise competition, the infernal ‘The Hundred’, as this cancerous spread of white-noise cricket continues its march around the world.

I’ve had quite a few stabs at The Hundred in these pages already (and, believe me, I haven’t started yet), but at least that farce has yet to get going.

In the meantime, the IPL is currently proceeding in the Middle East, the Big Bash is fast approaching, and there is no end to this orgy of T20 action.

Mention of the IPL prompts a willing confession – I haven’t watched a single ball of the current tournament.

Actually, I tell a lie – I did see one delivery, which produced a remarkable piece of fielding from Nicholas Pooran, of Kings XI Punjab, which was doing the rounds on Twitter last week.

Pooran, who had been due to play T20 again for Yorkshire this summer before the pandemic hit, dived over the boundary to prevent a six in the game against Rajasthan Royals by somehow flinging the ball back into play as he flew through the air.

The clip went viral, accompanied by the commentary of Kevin Pietersen, who yelled: “No way! No way! No way! That is unbelievable! The best save in T20 cricket ever! That’s the best I’ve ever seen!”

Granted, it was indeed a remarkable piece of work by Pooran, and Pietersen’s superlatives were echoed by current and former players.

Ultimately, though, it left me feeling numb, as if you were somehow obliged to feign an emotional response to something which, although outstanding and wonderfully athletic, was by no means so unbelievable that you were unable to get on with your life.

And that, ultimately, is one of the problems with the IPL, the BBL, and their ilk.

For everything is “unbelievable”. Everything is “incredible”. Everything is “the best I’ve ever seen” until the next best thing comes along just a few balls later.

It’s all here-today, gone-tomorrow stuff, the sort that satisfies limited palates. If you have the temerity to criticise it, it’s almost as though there is something wrong with you.

And yet everywhere you look people go crazy for this stuff.

On the BBC sport website last week the question was posed: “Is the Indian Premier League the greatest, most entertaining cricket competition in the world?”

And then the writer answered it himself, saying: “If this week is anything to go by, you’ll have a tough time arguing against that claim.”

Yet for those of us who don’t equate entertainment to the number of sixes scored, or the number of runs fashioned in the six-over powerplay, that is not the case.

I felt just as numb when there was much kerfuffle recently when England’s Jofra Archer hit four sixes in an over in an IPL game.

In the nicest possible way, so what? Let me guess, each time the ball flew over the boundary without bouncing. When you’ve seen one six, dear, you’ve seen them all.

You’ll notice, too, how cricket, and particularly T20, is increasingly bogged down with numbing data. The amount of statistical analysis that goes on today – usually held up as the most insightful thing you’ll see this side of Socrates and Plato – is mind-boggling.

Cricket isn’t just about statistics, though, how far the ball has been smashed, or what a bowler’s economy rate is in the “death” overs, it’s about something much deeper and more visceral.

It’s why Test cricket – the slow build-up of drama, the historical narrative that informs the present, the intense examination of technique and temperament – is so special and, ergo, under existential threat. Test cricket doesn’t need all the razzmatazz and hullabaloo.

Yes, I know, each to their own and all that.

Different strokes for different folks, as I said at the start.

But, as a wise man once said, there’s nowt so queer as folk.

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