Shame On Clarke And Cronies

Of the many extravagant claims made for Twenty20, I think my favourite is the one about it helping cricket crack America. David Lloyd mentions it in his column, for example.

I doubt it: Americans already have an exciting, fast-paced, brilliantly-marketed bat-and-ball game that takes about three hours. It is called baseball, and they seem to like it.

I was in Ohio this week, where I saw the Cincinnati Reds play the St Louis Cardinals. Always working for you, dear reader, I conducted a straw poll of possible interest in Twenty20 cricket. Support ranged from none to none whatsoever. Test match, ODI, Twenty20: to Americans, it's all men called Nigel drinking tea, and fair play to them. They have their ways, we have ours.

So what does Sir Allen Stanford want for his money? Presumably not just a chance to shake hands with Sir Ian Botham and get Giles Clarke to kiss him on the bee-hind.

Given the frankly mediocre fare on offer, $20million to watch two also-ran sides take part in an exhibition match seems daft. What if All-Stars / England are skittled out for 80-odd and the opponents knock the runs off in 40 minutes? It'll be a pathetic joke. Some braying twerp in your office might get into it for a bit while sixes are being smashed, but there will always be more exciting spectacles for the thicko than cricket in the long run. It won't take many wash-outs to scare off the floating voter.

Stanford is clearly not an idiot: he's paying massively over the odds for something in the short-term, which means he must have big plans for getting his dough back, and then some, in the longer term. How this will come to pass is as yet unclear, but it looks pretty much that the ECB will be doing whatever it is that he wants them to do.

He has said that he finds Test cricket "boring". But to him and all the other apologists for the 20 over game, here's the breakdown: Test cricket IS cricket. The one-day stuff is a childish sideshow with a fraction of the depth, interest, history and drama.

And the money. That is all extremely boring, really. I honestly couldn't care less what Paul Collingwood earns, or anyone else. I care about his batting. His double century at Adelaide was one of the most enjoyable things I have ever watched, in sport and indeed any other arena of human achievement. Not necessarily for the balls he hit, but for its sheer bloody-mindedness and for the shared joy of seeing a decent bloke rise from competent water carrier to being on top of the world. I hope, very much as it happens, that the feeling he had when he passed 200 will stay with him forever. I hope he wouldn't swap it for a million pounds. What would you rather be remembered for: an Ashes double ton against the great Warne and McGrath, or having a massive kitchen extension put in?

It's nice for Colly that he is going to make a wedge from Twenty 20, and good luck to him. But already there are rumblings of "what about me?" from players who have been good servants but are not in the frame to make the XI - and dark hints from various players that "this is the future" and Test cricket could go to the wall as everyone gets his nose in the trough, choosing Twenty 20 over their country.

There is more to life than money, and one of those things is sport. I strongly suspect the player who does forgo international honours for Twenty 20 will be sorry later. And we, the lovers of the real sport, should bloody well make them think twice, by giving them grief where possible and by boycotting Twenty 20 if it comes to that.

And if the sport on offer is this sort of Mickey Mouse effort the England vs All Stars could well be, then sooner or later, the public as a whole are going to see it for what it is: a bit of fun but totally inferior to Test cricket. Anyone who thinks otherwise is, in sporting terms, a cretin, and shame on Giles Clarke for giving them the keys to the castle.