Sunday, April 4, 2010

About Twenty20

Twenty20 is a form of cricket, originally introduced in the United Kingdom for professional inter-county competition by the England and Wales Cricket
Board (ECB), in 2003. A Twenty20 game involves two teams; each has a single innings, batting for a maximum of 20 overs. Twenty20 cricket is also known as T20 cricket.

A Twenty20 game is completed in about three and half hours, with each innings lasting around 75 minutes, thus bringing the game closer to the timespan of other popular team sports. It was introduced to create a lively form of the game which would be attractive to spectators at the ground and viewers on television and as such it has been very successful. The ECB did not intend that Twenty20 would replace other forms of cricket and these have continued alongside it.

Since its inception the game has spread around the cricket world. On most international tours there is at least one Twenty20 match and most Test-playing nations have a domestic cup competition. The inaugural World Twenty20 was played in South Africa in 2007 with India defeating Pakistan in the final by five runs.]Pakistan again featured in the final of the 2009 World Twenty20, this time against Sri Lanka, winning by eight wickets


 

One Day International

One Day International (ODI) is a form of cricket, in which 50 overs are played per side between two national cricket teams. The Cricket World Cup is played in this format. One Day International matches are also called "Limited Overs Internationals (LOI)", because they are limited overs cricket matches between national sides, and if the weather interferes they are not always completed in one day. Important one-day matches, international and domestic, often have two days set aside, the second day being a "reserve" day to allow more chance of the game being completed if a result is not possible on the first day (for instance if play is prevented or interrupted by rain).

The international one-day game is a late twentieth-century development. The first ODI was played on 5 January 1971 between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. When the first three days of the third Test were washed out officials decided to abandon the match and, instead, play a one-off one day game consisting of 40 eight-ball overs per side. Australia won the game by 5 wickets.

In the late 1970s, Kerry Packer established the rival World Series Cricket (WSC) competition, and it introduced many of the features of One Day International cricket that are now commonplace, including coloured uniforms, matches played at night under floodlights with a white ball and dark sight screens, and, for television broadcasts, multiple camera angles, effects microphones to capture sounds from the players on the pitch, and on-screen graphics. The first of the matches with coloured uniforms was the WSC Australians in wattle gold versus WSC West Indians in coral pink, played at VFL Park in Melbourne on 17 January 1979. It was credited with making cricket a more professional sport

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball team sport that is first documented as being played in southern England in the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, cricket had developed to the point where it had become the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being played overseas and by the mid-19th century the first international matches were being held. Today, the game's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), has 104 member countries. With its greatest popularity in the Test playing countries, cricket is the world's second most popular sport.

The rules of the game are known as the Laws of Cricket. These are maintained by the ICC and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which holds the copyright. A cricket match is played on a cricket field at the centre of which is a pitch. The match is contested between two teams of eleven players each. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible without being dismissed ("out") while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the other team's batsmen and limit the runs being scored. When the batting team has used all its available overs or has no remaining batsmen, the roles become reversed and it is now the fielding team's turn to bat and try to outscore the opposition.

There are several variations in the length of a game of cricket. In professional cricket this ranges from a limit of 20 overs per side (Twenty20) to a game played over 5 days (Test cricket). Depending on the form of the match being played, there are different rules that govern how a game is won, lost, drawn or tied.