Cricket is a constantly evolving game that has been constantly evolving and changing throughout its long history. These changes ranged from changing the rules to the development of completely new formats, such as T20.
In the same wide structural framework, there are few sports that can boast of three different formats. Their closest example of a team sport that can be imagined is rugby, where two different formats – rugby league and rugby union -thrive.
But even rugby, with its two unique formats, is not a very accurate example of another sport that, like cricket, can have several formats. Although all three formats in cricket have their own character and rules, they still retain the basic characteristics and rules of the game of cricket to be considered as different branches of the same tree. For example, in all three formats, a ball that exceeds the limit on impact will receive 4 points for the hitting team.
However, in contrast to the different cricket formats, the differences between the two rugby formats are simply too great for rugby Union and rugby League to be considered as two different offshoots of the same tree. You could not blame them for calling them two completely different sports. Unlike cricket, where the same number of players (11) on each side takes the field in all three formats (tests, one day and T20), the number of players playing in rugby league (13) and rugby Union (15) are different.
Hitting a “six” in all three cricket formats gives the batting team the same number of runs–6, but in the two different rugby formats, scoring a “try” gives the team scoring the try a different number of runs (5 runs in rugby Union, 4 runs in rugby league). Just imagine if you hit a limit in cricket, the batting team would score 7 runs in T20 and 6 runs in tests and 5 runs in one day!! These are just some of the among many differences between Rugby Union and rugby League, which forces to say that they are two different sports with some similarities, not two shoots of the same sport with some differences the three formats are definitely cricket for sure
Although we may deviate a little from the topic, but the goal was to show that there is no team sport that can really boast of two different formats, let alone three, and the example of the two different formats of rugby – the sport that many come closest to cricket in this respect is not an exact comparison with cricket in this respect.
While cricket has three unique formats, where does the new cricket format fit in? There is no doubt that at a national level in most countries the impact of T20 cricket has been enormous. The advent of T20 and the popularity of the format led to the fact that cricketers never got better financially. Of course, from time to time there were players who earned a lot of money, but this financial wealth for cricketers was reserved only for the rarest of the few, the best, while the average or even the really good international players hardly feel like arranging paychecks, and can not even reach those who have never seen the heights of international cricket and have limited themselves to playing domestic cricket.
With the advent of T20 cricket and the various T20 leagues that have emerged, this balance has changed. Even national players, and some even say national players with limited talent, have begun to receive high salaries. The popularity of T20 leagues around the world was huge, and crowds flocked to the field, sponsors donated money, and administrators became rich as never before.
The Indian Premier League (IPL), which is by far the largest T20 league in the world, both in terms of the international stars on display and the money on offer, has brought the salary of cricketers to the same level as some of the best athletes in the world. According to the annual global Sports Salaries’ review of 2010, the Indian Premier League was the second highest paid league in the world in terms of the average salaries paid to athletes participating in a league. The NBA leads the ranking with an average annual salary of 2.62 million pounds, the IPL follows closely behind with an average annual salary of 2.50 million pounds. The English Premier League was far behind with an average annual salary of 1.46 million pounds, taking fourth place in the table.
In the report for 2013, the IPL retained its position as the second highest paid league in the world with an average annual salary of 2.58 million pounds, behind the NBA
IPL is the second highest paid league of all sports, measured by the average salary per player
This is an awesome statistic for a sport that is hardly the most popular in the world. A cricket match until the advent of T20 cricket could last from a whole day to 5 days, and given the time it took for a cricket match to end, this clearly affected its popularity. However, T20 reduced this disconnect between the sport and potential new spectators by introducing a format in which a match lasts 3 hours, which clearly had an impact on new spectators and led to the rise of the T20 cricket leagues.
Until the advent of T20, even the most ardent cricket devotees had difficulty following a match, especially on weekdays, while after the advent of T20, even the most casual cricket devotees can include a T20 match in their schedule. However, there are serious issues with T20 cricket that make it the least “crickety” cricket format.
