The T20 form of crick­et, af­ter al­most 20 years as the great­est pure spec­ta­cle of the grand old game of the Eng­lish Vil­lage Green, fur­ther es­tab­lished it­self at the 2026 World Cup with great per­ma­nen­cy as the most at­trac­tive, dy­nam­ic and fi­nan­cial­ly re­ward­ing for­mat for all in­volved.

In yes­ter­day’s fi­nal at the Naren­dra Mo­di Sta­di­um in Ahmed­abad, In­dia, a re­port­ed 120,000 spec­ta­tors gath­ered to ex­press na­tion­al­ism for their teams, but above all to en­joy the big hit­ting, spec­tac­u­lar field­ing and bowlers seek­ing to find ways and means to re­strict and in­evitably send glad­i­a­to­r­i­al bat­ters back to the pavil­ion.

The vast ma­jor­i­ty were com­plete­ly in­volved and pleased in In­dia lift­ing the cham­pi­onship for the third time to go ahead of Eng­land and the West In­dies, each hav­ing won it on two pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions.

New Zealand, a team far more con­ser­v­a­tive in their play, have, how­ev­er, made sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments to their game to the point of reach­ing the fi­nal, hav­ing beat­en back the more ex­cit­ing South Africans. The Ki­wis were by no means di­min­ished.

Af­ter the ini­tial pe­ri­od of com­par­isons be­ing made be­tween T20 and Test crick­et, in which the short form was usu­al­ly con­sid­ered as not con­sti­tut­ing “re­al crick­et,” the for­mat, if not ac­cept­ed, or on­ly grudg­ing­ly so by the afi­ciona­dos - those who spend long hours of star­ing at the cen­tre, dis­cussing tech­nique, char­ac­ter, com­mit­ment to na­tion, the con­di­tion of the pitch, the swing­ing and spin­ning of the ball, the straight bat, grind­ing crick­et over five days - has been recog­nised as be­ing of high en­ter­tain­ment and dar­ing. 

Com­mer­cial­ly, es­pe­cial­ly in the coun­tries with large pop­u­la­tions at­tend­ing the games live, and with stands which ac­com­mo­date tens of thou­sands of spec­ta­tors, and with huge tele­vi­sion au­di­ences around the world, in­clud­ing the non-tra­di­tion­al crick­et play­ing coun­tries, the tenth T20 World Cup must sure­ly be con­sid­ered a great suc­cess.

The point of it all is that the T20 game, and even the ODI ver­sion, fea­tures crick­et which is not to be com­pared with the Test game; it’s about a form of great en­ter­tain­ment, es­pe­cial­ly need­ed in times of the present.

Of great im­por­tance gained from watch­ing the games played in In­dia and Sri Lan­ka, were the vi­su­als of the mod­ern sub-con­ti­nent, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven, hun­dreds of thou­sands of crick­et fans in the stands, en­joy­ing the sport, the time­out free of so­cial and oth­er forms of en­cum­brances, frankly a mod­ern and suc­cess for the or­gan­is­ers.

For the play­ers, the teams, the ad­min­is­tra­tors and for the con­tin­u­ing de­vel­op­ment of crick­et in all its forms, the sold-out au­di­ences and the val­ue re­ceived from tele­view­ing, are sure means of re­mov­ing the game and its play­ers from be­ing the poor of in­ter­na­tion­al sport.

Play­ing in the tour­na­ment with­out be­ing dis­graced must sure­ly be of great de­vel­op­ment ben­e­fit, es­pe­cial­ly for the “min­nows” of the game. In­deed, as seen in this tour­na­ment, the well-es­tab­lished crick­et play­ing na­tions had to de­vote se­ri­ous at­ten­tion to over­com­ing non-tra­di­tion­al crick­et-play­ing na­tions.  

For the West In­dies, the for­mer cham­pi­ons in all for­mats of the game, there has been some­thing of a re­vival hav­ing beat­en Eng­land and ap­pear­ing com­pet­i­tive against In­dia. But there can be no long-term com­fort in the per­for­mances. When the crunch came in the last eight of the tour­na­ment, we were crushed by South Africa and out­played by In­dia.

The hard work is be­fore our team if we are ever to be con­sid­ered amongst the cham­pi­ons of the game.