T20: The cruelest format of the game

T20: The cruelest format of the game

Which are the cruelest sport formats in the world? The readers will label my question as illogical and out of context. How can sport formats be cruel? They are played with passion and their aim is to unite everyone. However, I beg to differ. According to me, cricket has given birth to the cruelest format. The battle of bat and ball was termed as gentlemen’s game but the situation has changed over the last few years. The availability of less time and the demand of more action has invented T20, the action packed drama of cricket. It is the format that doesn’t give too many chances to recover. The superstars are turned into a villain and are buried.

The pressure levels have reached new heights and bottom lines have become more and more important. Yuvraj Singh is the prime example of this so called cruelty. The last match which he played for TeamIndia was the T20 World Cup final against Sri Lanka. One of the greatest limited over specialists Yuvraj Singh was taken to task for not scoring on each and every ball he faced. With every dot ball he played in his 21-ball 11, with every shot he missed, the voices grew against him. Virat Kohli, the only performer from the Indian side in that particular match, was frustrated while the dug-out was looking clueless. This was not the worst inning cricket has witnessed in this format but was declared as the one by most of the fans and few cricket experts. 

The slam bang version has no space to stage a comeback unlike the other formats. It is easy to identify and isolate the player as Villain in T20s.  Yuvraj Singh’s house was pelted with stones from some idiotic fans but we all knew inside our hearts that he could have done better. However, it was not a lack of effort from the left-hand maestro. Stones have previously been hurled at the Indian cricketers’ houses in the past but they were directed towards the poor performance of the team and not the individual. T20 has brought the concept of the weakest link because it is in the grasp of an individual to influence the result of a particular game. 

The rule book says a player has got every right to back himself and this was the same thing which Yuvraj Singh was trying to do in his last international game but it eventually turned against him and proved to be a deciding factor in the end. Yuvraj Singh was dumped by the selectors after that match and has failed to stage his comeback. The explosive version of cricket has exploded on the cricketing career of Yuvi and there are chances of him missing the bus for the 2015 World Cup, which will be played in Australia and New Zealand. Miracles have happened with him in the past and he certainly needs one more if wants to see himself in the Indian jersey.

The performance of one player is enough to bring the whole team down without being awful in the shortest format of the game. It is not right to demand low margins of error and high level of performance from a player whenever he goes on the field. But it is in the nature of T20, which has no room for an error. It is kind of a beast, which won’t let you relax during the course of proceedings.

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