The Spin

In this week's Spin:
Oh the drama!;
Oh Younus!

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QUALITY, QUALITY, QUALITY

You may think that Twenty20 isn't proper cricket. You may wince at reverse-reverse-sweeps and ramps over the keeper's head. You may weep at the sight of line-and-length merchants treating every over like a box of liquorice allsorts. And you may wonder why exactly the music has to endanger the eardrums. But surely even you have to concede that for comedy and tragedy, elation and despair, plus plenty of other abstract nouns we won't trouble you with here, the first four days of the World Twenty20 have been hard to beat.

Forgive the hyperbole. All the Spin is doing is following the example set by more or less every captain, coach, man of the match, sound technician and press officer who has spoken in the elated/desperate aftermath of the eight matches thus far. Hyperbole, is seems, is the inevitable consequence of watching 20-over cricket, and while it is a quality that can be manufactured in a cricket column, it does not generally find a home in the guarded press conference of modern sport, where being over the moon apparently counts as a state secret. Yes, folks, the players - with the possible exception of Pakistan - care about World Twenty20. And that is four-fifths of the battle.

Just look at the roll of honour. On Friday we had Paul Collingwood not knowing where to look and Jeroen Smits not knowing how to avoid saying "I told you so". On Saturday Chris Gayle looked cool again. On Sunday it was Collingwood's relief and (see below) the affectations of Younus Khan. And yesterday there was the possibly unprecedented sight of an international coach, Jamie Siddons, berating the shot-selection of his own captain, Mohammad Ashraful, while his captain was sitting head bowed to his left. And then came Ricky Ponting.

The action on the field has been pretty good too. Stuart Broad's meltdown followed by Stuart Broad's comeback. Gayle's sixes on to the road and the roof. Mike Hussey's fluffed catch. Kevin Pietersen turning his back on twos with distinctly regal waves. Ajantha Mendis beguiling the Aussies and Tillekeratne Dilshan moving to a half-century by flicking the ball over both his head and Brad Haddin's. The O'Brien brothers. Stumps for goalposts. Marvellous! Not proper cricket? How about proper sport in that case?

Twenty20 will never win over a certain section of the cricket community, because - as we keep being told - it lacks the protracted ebb and flow provided by the Test match. Of course it does. So does every form of sport played that lasts less than five days. But that is not in itself a reason to dislike it. If the storyline of the recent Indian Premier League (last year's two duffers reach the final) wasn't enough to convince you that Twenty20 can throw up some good yarns too, then perhaps the last few days have helped sway you.

Of course, World Twenty20 2009 may so far have been lucky (even the other matches have given us Scotland's brave batting against New Zealand, and a reminder that AB de Villiers is currently one of the first names on a World XI teamsheet in any form of the game). But the capacity of 20-over cricket to make heroes of some and prize vegetables of others is surely a decent chunk of sport's essence. The players know this, hence the all-too-human mistakes they keep making.

Now comes the part the administrators must be careful about. Twenty20 overkill is a theme that has cropped up here before and will probably do so again as long as the suits - inspired by Lalit Modi - continue to believe that quality is the necessary precursor for quantity. Part of the reason for the success of the competition so far is that England has never staged a global Twenty20 event. And we still live in an innocent age where the counties seem perfectly able to survive with just the one Twenty20 tournament per season.

In 2010 that changes with the introduction of the utterly superfluous P20, the birth of which may be worthy of a parliamentary inquiry. And, who knows, by then we may even have a second annual IPL on our hands, not to mention a Champions League and assorted other domestic tournaments. Overkill hardly does it justice.

The story of the last few days has been a bewitching one. But every story grows staler with the telling. If cricket is mature enough to ration its Twenty20 handouts, this is a game that can run and run.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I think rap music has a lot to do with it. It makes it sound cool not to conform, and to be violent" - so that's what's wrong with British society today. Our thanks to Andrew Flintoff and GQ magazine for enlightening us ...

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WIN! WIN! WIN! A CRICKET DIARY WITH A DIFFERENCE

"the year of the balls 2008: a disrespective" is not your average cricket book. But the Spin knows a fellow-maverick when it sees one, which is why the three copies it purloined from the bag of Aussie author Jarrod Kimber while he was busy drooling over a picture of Peter Siddle are now up for grabs. All you have to do to win a copy of a blog-turned-book good enough to persuade Gideon Haigh to write its foreword is answer the following question:

Australia have just failed dismally in the World Twenty20 for the second tournament in succession. But who knocked them out in the 2007 edition?

Answers please in an email to lawrence.booth@guardian.co.uk by 12 noon on Monday 15 June.

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EXTRAS

The general consensus is that Younus Khan is a very nice man, even if no one seems quite sure how to spell his name. But how to explain his quixotic performance in Sunday night's press conference at The Oval after Pakistan had performed so miserably they made even a team that had been beaten by the Netherlands look like world-beaters? On Friday at Lord's Paul Collingwood had done the decent thing by showing just the right amounts of contrition, misery and disbelief. But Younus spoke with all the gravitas of a man whose feet were being tickled under the table by a small urchin.

"It's not a disaster," he rightly pointed out as tabloid hacks stared at each other with incredulity. "It's only Twenty20 cricket. It's not a proper international." This is the kind of antediluvian thinking that went out of fashion at least three years ago, and - credit where it is inevitably due - Younus quickly corrected himself. "Well, it is international cricket but it's only a fun game. It's all about the crowd. When England lost to the Netherlands everyone said it was only a bit of fun ..."

No matter that "a bit of fun" was not quite how the defeat to the Dutch was depicted by the English papers. But "a bit of fun" was certainly what Younus appeared to be having as he took aim at his own team and aimed a series of one-liners that would have been scathing had each one not been accompanied by a loud guffaw and a cheeky grin. "I have no idea why our fielders are unable to field properly" ... "Even if Butt scored 28 as an opener we'll have to think about him because of his fielding" ... "Kamran Akmal is a senior batsman but he can't somehow take the responsibility" ... "We love The Oval. We even thought about refusing to come out after the mid-innings interval."

Actually, he didn't say that last bit. But if he had, it would have been with an appreciative chuckle at his own humor and a reminder that we should all calm down because quite frankly this is Twenty20 we're talking about, not some money-spinning format that could make millionaires of us all and will undoubtedly play a huge role in the future of cricket ...

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CRICKET, LOVELY CRICKET? YES INDEED!

Last week we asked you to name the former Yorkshire cricket writer whose collected works won this year's Wisden Almanack's Cricket Book of the Year Award. The answer was not, as one or two of the more lazy Googlers among you thought, Duncan Hamilton, although Hamilton did edit the tome. No, it was JM Kilburn, the former cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post, with his book Sweet Summers. The three lucky winners, who will each be sent a copy of Cricket, Lovely Cricket? An Addict's Guide to the World's Exasperating Game, by, er, the Spin, are John Gooch, Luella Forbes and Tom Percival. Heartiest congratulations to the three of you and the usual heartfelt commiserations to everyone else.

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THE WEEK IN CRICKET

· India warm up for the World Twenty20 with a punishing nine-wicket win over Pakistan at The Brit Oval, with emergency opener Rohit Sharma hammering 80 off 53 balls.

· Luke Wright (75 not out from 38 balls) and Ravi Bopara (60 off 35) underline England's credentials as a world-class Twenty20 side in a nine-wicket mauling of a Chris Gayle-less West Indies at Lord's.

· Jim Allenby hits 110 off 58 balls as Leicestershire see off Nottinghamshire in the Twenty20 Cup. Lancashire make it six wins out of six with a six-wicket win over Durham, while the Spin kicks the cat as Northamptonshire's 100% record finally comes to an end at the hands of Somerset.

· Andrew Symonds is sent home from the World Twenty20 for "breaking a number of team rules related to alcohol and other issues". It is believed he broke his contractual promise not to drink in public, and speculation immediately surrounds his future, with his agent telling Cricinfo that he may only turn out in future for Deccan Chargers in the Indian Premier League. Cameron White replaces him in Australia's 15-man squad.

· Mahendra Singh Dhoni stages a press conference in Nottingham flanked by the entire Indian team to deny a rift between him and Virender Sehwag following a report in The Times of India. Dhoni, who has presumably never read the Spin, calls the report "false and irresponsible behaviour".

· The Netherlands beat England by four wickets off the last ball as the World Twenty20 gets off to the most surreal start imaginable. Ryan ten Doeschate and Edgar Schiferli scamper two runs off the last delivery after Stuart Broad fails with his third run-out attempt of the over and watches in horror as the ball disappears to long-off for the fatal overthrow.

· Australia's amusement at England's demise is cut short by Chris Gayle, who whacks 88 off 50 balls as West Indies destroy Ricky Ponting's men by seven wickets at The Brit Oval. Earlier, Jerome Taylor takes two wickets in the opening over, including Ponting lbw first ball, as Australia make 169 for seven. New Zealand beat Scotland by seven wickets in a game reduced to seven overs a side by the weather.

· Yuvraj Singh's undefeated 40 off 18 balls takes India out of Bangladesh's reach at Trent Bridge before Pragyan Ojha takes 4 for 21 to seal a 25-run win for the defending champions.

· The New Zealand fast bowler Shane Bond terminates his contract with the Indian Cricket League, thus heightening the chances of a return to Test cricket, where his 79 wickets have so far cost just 22 each.

· Steve Harmison begins his latest crack at redemption by taking four for 43 as Durham bowl out Hampshire for 105 in the county championship at Chester-le-Street. Michael Vaughan, meanwhile, makes a duck for Yorkshire against Sussex at Headingley.

· England live to fight another Twenty20 day/night with a 48-run thrashing of Pakistan at The Brit Oval, but it's bye bye Australia after they go down to Sri Lanka by six wickets at Trent Bridge. Ireland make it through to the Super Eights with an O'Brien-brothers-inspired six-wicket win against Bangladesh.

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CONTACT THE SPIN

Email lawrence.booth@guardian.co.uk and feel free to cc. sports.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk while you're at it.

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