It’s fair to say the game of Cricket has vastly evolved since its foundation in the late 16th Century, but the sport is now arguably going through its greatest transition yet with talk of even greater changes ahead. To many this will come as no surprise, as it is a conundrum facing numerous sports inevitably competing for viewership against the all-encompassing marketing juggernaut that is football.
Modern times and culture have no doubt affected the popularity of Cricket. In a world where everything is seemingly now at your fingertips via your mobile device, social norms no longer align with the traditional virtues of Cricket—patience and long suffering to name but a few. Gone are the days when you had to wait for anything, be it your mail order to arrive, a new CD to be released or even for a program to come on TV.
Thankfully, Cricket, a sport enamoured with tradition, has reacted, adding a new format with a view to providing more explosive entertainment, one that patience is not required—or advised— and where long suffering is simply not an option. This new format is of course Twenty20 Cricket (or T20 as it is now commonly known) and the message is quite simply “Go hard, or go home”, a mantra that resonates with a time-poor public, and is in line with what many would consider the trend of the times, impatience.
Both on and off the field, Twenty20 reflects this modern notion of entertainment, embellished at the Home of Cricket (Lord’s) with pyrotechnics and family-friendly mascots. Don’t worry, not all Cricketing traditions have changed, the multiple bars are still well stocked, and the beverage selection if anything has increased in both volume and diversity.
With Lord’s located a stone’s throw away from St John’s Wood Station and with tickets priced at £25 for adults (£5 for under-16s) the T20 makes for an innovative response to the question “What should we do after work?”, while this shorter format means the game will pretty much be completed in a similar time-frame to a football match.
The final Vitality Blast T20 match takes place at Lord’s this coming Thursday, with proceedings expected to be seen out the way they began— in frenetic fashion. All very much in line with the times.
Vitality Blast T20 @ Lord’s
Thursday 16th August, 6.15pm
Middlesex v Essex Eagles
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit lords.org/t20.
LORDS.org
