Twenty20
When the Benson & Hedges Cup ended in 2002, the ECB sought another one-day competition to fill with the younger generation in response to dwindling crowds and reduced sponsorship.
The Board wanted to deliver fast-paced, exciting cricket accessible to fans who were put off by the longer versions of the game.
[3] Stuart Robertson, the marketing manager of the ECB, proposed a 20-over-per-innings game, invented by New Zealand cricketer Martin Crowe, to county chairmen in 2001, and they voted 11–7 in favour of adopting the new format.
[5] The first season of Twenty20 in England was a relative success, with the Surrey Lions defeating the Warwickshire Bears by nine wickets in the final to claim the title.
[6] The first Twenty20 match held at Lord's, on 15 July 2004 between Middlesex and Surrey, attracted a crowd of 27,509, the highest attendance for any county cricket game at the ground – other than a one-day final – since 1953.
[7] Thirteen teams from different parts of the country participated in Pakistan's inaugural competition in 2004, with the Faisalabad Wolves the first winners.
Guyana won the inaugural event, defeating Trinidad and Tobago by five wickets, securing US$1 million in prize money.
The respective winners of the English and Caribbean Twenty20 competitions, Middlesex and Trinidad and Tobago, and a Stanford Superstars team formed from West Indies domestic players.
[14][15] On 1 November, the Stanford Superstars played England in what was expected to be the first of five fixtures in as many years with the winner claiming US$20 million in each match.
In September 2017, the broadcasting and digital rights for the next five years (2018–2022) of the IPL[19] were sold to Star India for US$2.55 billion,[20] making it one of the world's most lucrative sports league per match.
[26] On 17 February 2005 Australia defeated New Zealand in the first men's international Twenty20 match, played at Eden Park in Auckland.
Some of the players also sported moustaches or beards and hairstyles popular in the 1980s, taking part in a competition amongst themselves for "best retro look", at the request of the Beige Brigade.
Australia won the game comprehensively, and as the result became obvious towards the end of the NZ innings, the players and umpires took things less seriously: Glenn McGrath jokingly replayed the Trevor Chappell underarm incident from a 1981 ODI between the two sides, and Billy Bowden showed him a mock red card (red cards are not normally used in cricket) in response.
On 16 February 2006 New Zealand defeated West Indies in a tie-breaking bowl-out 3–0; 126 runs were scored apiece in the game proper.
The ICC has declared that it sees T20 as the optimal format for globalizing the game,[28] and in 2018, announced that it will give international status to all T20 cricket matches played between its member nations.
[34] Matthew Hayden credited retirement from international cricket with aiding his performance in general and fitness in particular in the Indian Premier League.
[38] Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting, on the other hand, has criticised Twenty20 as being detrimental to Test cricket and for hampering batsmen's scoring skills and concentration.
Former West Indies captains Clive Lloyd, Michael Holding and Garfield Sobers criticised Twenty20 for its role in discouraging players from representing their test cricket national side, with many West Indies players like Chris Gayle, Sunil Narine and Dwayne Bravo preferring instead to play in a Twenty20 franchise elsewhere in the world and make far more money.
In June 2009, speaking at the annual Cowdrey Lecture at Lord's, former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist pushed for Twenty20 to be made an Olympic sport.
The batting team members do not arrive from and depart to traditional dressing rooms, but come and go from a bench (typically a row of chairs) visible in the playing arena, analogous to association football's technical area or a baseball dugout.
