Pardon me for being an American who has only recently begun to follow cricket, but the answer seems rather obvious: lights. Every outdoor sport in the US plays well under lights - even twilight games that transition from sun to full lights over the course of an evening. For a stadium to qualify for ODIs or International 20-over matches, it should have a full set of lights. There are even portable light systems that include a generator, lights, and extendable mast for stadiums that don't want to invest in permanent lighting.

I totally agree that it was not good enough. I was at the match yesterday. My party included four adults and one child, a total investment of well over £100 with a very poor return. We won't be going again until common sense is allowed to prevail in these situations.

Well done to Cricinfo for picking up on this. Once again the fan is let down by a sport that can ill afford the compacency which it continually displays.

Russell Card
Maidstone, Kent

Limited Overs Cricket is a contradiction in terms, and should be stamped out immediately. Cicket is the greatest sport ever invented, and deserves to be played properly.

A twenty overs a side thrash may be OK for park teams; but to see top-ranking professional cricketers engaged in such a travesty is like hearing Simon Rattle conducting the LSO in a performance of Pop Goes the Weasel.

I agree with you totally about the silly conditions that occured recently.
20/20 will bring a whole host of new fans which will hopefully make a whole new generation of followers for the real game. The ICC will probably do their best to mess it up at some point with as many 20/20 games played as possible, due to all the extra money they can make. In its present form it is a good laugh and has huge light hearted entertainment value.
As for the inept South African organisers, between them and the equaly inept ICC they will probably manage to make a mess of the 20/20 world cup somewhere along the way. I can see it now " Cricket Kit stolen , players mugged, spectators mugged, cars highjacked and huge power failures everywhere"

What happens when we get bored of 20Twenty? 10Ten? a 5 over slogathon like you can play online? How many young kids, brought up on a diet of 20 over cricket, will have the patience to play and/or watch a 50 over game or Test match?

Makes money, dilutes cricket.

You have to have consistent regulations across a tournament (rather than to suit particular start times). It wouldn't be possible to extend the game for two and a half hours for a match that started at 5.30 (if the venue didn't have floodlights) so you have to make it fair to every team. Otherwise everyone would ask to play their home games at the weekend with afternoon starts (and would, in effect, be penalised if they didn't). It's not like this is a new rule - if Kent had an issue with it they should have brought it up earlier.

Can anyone from the ECB give us a proper reason as to why the decision was taken to reduce the overs of this game. I haven't seen anything in the media giving us a decent reason. Was thinking about going to the Yorkshire v Durham game on Saturday but vary wary of seeing hardly any cricket due to the appalling weather. The £15 tickets make me even more wary!

D/L Method does not belong in 20/20 cricket. It is already a shortened form of cricket, you should be allowed to complete the entire game. (Let's face it; this was conceived by the idea that a baseball game only lasts about 3 hours so someone figured out a way to shorten cricket to that time frame. It IS a good thing.)

Now, let's try to add back real cricket to this shortened version. Need two innings so that a batsman gets two chances. Bowlers need more than the warm-up overs. Let's not make it a run-fest. A baseball game that is a dual between two very good pitchers and ends in 1-0 score IS exciting. I'd say let's make the short-short version like this:

2 innings per side
15 overs per innings
up to 5 (6?) overs per bowler
longer boundary, so not every chip shot is a 6
5-minute innings breaks
Done in about 4 - 4.5 hours.

Twenty20 is so meaningless as a contest why don't they just all agree to play in all conditions and be done with it. At Bristol yesterday they were playing in weather so bad I wouldn't venture out the house without first notifying loved ones. Even the players treated it as a joke.

Did I miss a six? Never mind, there'll be a couple more in the next over.

I never saw the point of globalizing cricket which is, I assume, the whole point of Twenty20. Cricket far is too eccentric, old-fashioned - despite the advance of technology – and rooted in British colonial history to be really acceptable on a global scale. I know I am going to sound like a pompous old far* - but I am not; I am only 24 - for saying this, but damn Twenty20. Damn it to hell. It’s just not cricket.

Simon Barnes, writing in yesterday's Times, wrote a very poignant piece where he said that the moment the balance between seeking excellence and increasing revenue in sport - any sport, not just cricket - is tipped in favour of making as much money as possible, the sport would essentially begin to die slowly and horribly. I don't see Twenty20 as a means of seeking excellence.

To John,

Cricket does have night matches, but for some reason - and perhaps an English cricket fan can explain this to me as well - night matches are pretty rare in England and in the West Indies. I've always wondered why this was the case.

To Rob,

The idea of a Twenty20 being decided by the Duckworth-Lewis method is laughable. But then this is the ICC; I wouldn't put it past them.

If we must put up with this farcical form of the game, can we at least do away with the name, and just call it 20-over cricket.
Better yet, just do away with it altogether.

Hello,
Folks here are going a bit to harsh on the 20-20 format. I am a 22 year old and I have played cricket my entire life. Now though, I think I don't have the patience or time to watch a test match or a 50 overs game for that matter.

Imagine how hard it is for the younger generation to follow the so called "normal" cricket games.

I think Test cricket is reaching its end soon,

Runs runs runs.Actually, with the blinkers on. Because things are thrown of balance, and there are not many contests left. So I switch of.
Its maddening, because what happens more often these days, be it 20 or the 50 over game, wickets fall in the pursuit of setting a target, or the panic in chasing one, and collapse happen more often. Only thing, the target is so high that there are few recoveries where the match turns into a contest.
As for dumbing down, the sideshows we have experienced in SA is so juvenile. They did not have to whore up 20-20 as much as they did.