There must be something to all this talk about the theory of Evolution. The roadmap Cricket has taken through its history would have done Darwin proud. However, at the end of the day, it is more than just survival of the fittest. There is nothing to say that Test cricket is not fit enough to survive the future – there are still plenty of takers for a good, solid Test encounter. ODI cricket, too, is fairly robust. The game today is certainly fit enough to survive the future, sure, but is it fit enough to progress, spread the sport and take it forward in the future? Possibly not.

And so we evolved to Twenty20, to which was added everything the spin doctors prescribed – rapid action, quick results, glamour, razzmatazz, fun. All indications and verdicts on Cricket’s newest species so far inevitably flash the green light. But the real test of how seriously Twenty20 is taken by the players themselves will be the upcoming ICC Twenty20 World Championships.

The Background
It is common knowledge that Twenty20 was started when some Marketing men put their heads together to figure a way out to get the local English populace to spend their afternoons watching domestic cricket. Research revealed that a majority of the population neither hated nor loved the game but “didn’t mind it”. Common sense revealed that a majority of this section of the population would enjoy spending an afternoon watching domestic cricket as long as it remained ‘an afternoon’ and they didn’t end up having to spend the whole day watching cricket. The result of putting these two together was Twenty20.

The initial challenge was – and to some extent, still is – figuring out how seriously will players take the ‘fun’ version of the game. Ultimately a sport (or its spin-off) will survive and grow only when those who play it are passionate, competitive and whenever necessary, violent about it. The good news was not (just) the steadily rising attendance figures, it was the fact that slowly, the focus was shifting from the colour and the music and the jazz to the actual competition between bat and ball. The situation now is that the domestic cricketers who play the fast-food version of the game are serious and competitive about it. Those who actually play Test grade international cricket – the likes of Ponting and his Aussie squad, to name a few – still remain publicly sceptical. With the advent of Twenty20, there is a lot more interest everywhere to collect live cricket updates and people are in constant need of online cricket info.

The countries with a headstart
Experience is not everything, but it is something. Yuvraj Singh, a new entrant to this format, has acknowledged that “I’ve played a couple of games and scored only in one. I’ve found it difficult to settle in. A couple of seasons more and we’ll get better at this.” What might have a significant bearing on the competition in this Twenty20 World Championship is how many countries have got the ‘couple of seasons’ of settling in that Yuvraj reckons they need. Let’s run through how much Twenty20 experience has each country been getting

- Not surprisingly, being the land where it has been invented, England play the most amount of Twenty20 cricket, with their current season involving 72 championship games, plus another day-night tournament. The world’s most experienced Twenty20 cricketer is Englishman Paul Nixon, with 41 games under his belt as of now. But England, like some of the subcontinental teams, has a long history of being gracious enough to not let such factors get in the way of a solid, wholesome collapse and choosing to lose even when someone was shovelling victory down their throats.

- South Africa are the second most experienced country as far as domestic Twenty20 (officially known as Pro20) games are concerned with three completed seasons, and a final that attracted a larger crowd than an international ODI game that took place on the same ground a couple of weeks before. Although they have a proven track record of blowing up on the big stage, they will still count as formidable opponents.

- New Zealand and Pakistan have also been relatively quick to latch onto Twenty20 - not surprising; given the audience-drain the longer version of the game was seeing, especially in New Zealand. They have had a domestic tournament running for the past two years, with 16 and 18 games each. The key factor is that the competition here is serious, with substantial cash prizes and sponsors involved.

- Australia, India and Sri Lanka also kicked off their respective domestic Twenty20 championship tournaments this season. The Australian tournament has the six state sides play each other home and away, with the league leaders playing out the finals.

However, these tournaments, possibly on account of the fact that this is their first year, lack the seriousness and competitiveness that goes into making for some actual preparation and training. The BCCI made no efforts to hide this fact, tagging the tournament as an ‘experimental’ version, without sponsors and hype. Effectively, it was little more than an exaggerated net practice session, with the World Cup in mind.The Aussie version, too, was launched more as a ‘fun’ tonic, with even Rugby League star Andrew Johns padding up and looking for a mighty heave in the New South Wales jersey. The entire Aussie squad clearly regards the format as nothing more than what it is described as – ‘Hit and giggle’ cricket, with Andrew Symonds being the latest to wonder aloud if a World Championship is really needed, and wouldn’t it be better to just have ‘fun’ with the concept.

However, given that for the Aussies, ‘fun’ usually means beating the hell out of the opponent, their extraordinary command over the brand of ‘power cricket’ that Twenty20 demands and their propensity to win almost everything in sight, it seems inevitable that they start as favourites.

- Bangladesh do not have a major Twenty20 domestic tournament as yet, whereas the West Indies may have benefited substantially from billionaire Allen Stanford’s Stanford 20/20 tournament organized last season.
This is as far as domestic experience is concerned. But what is more important is figuring out how much of it has actually translated into solid performance at the International level. Taking a look at how the teams stand as far their performance in International Twenty20 games are concerned, based on a simple ranking system, throws up a lot of new information.