The Stanford tournament was recently described as being akin to pornography, and watching developments in Antigua one can see why - it's all about exploitation and power...

The sight of Stanford himself snuggling up to England players' partners was profoundly depressing, although to no-one's great surprise, none of the England players did the gentlemanly thing, bitch-slapped the multi-millionnaire and told him to stick his money up his Anil Kumble.
 
The cricket itself, for all the close finishes, has a little less sparkle than your average 20/20, with the pitch not encouraging big hitting, although here at Slog6 we're quite keen on ropey floodlights.  In fact the comedy value of turning them off halfway through a high catch might help sell the game.  We could take things to another level, with weasels trained to run across the pitch in mid-delivery, streakers allowed once per innings from the batting team to put off the fielder, and randomly placed landmines in the outfield to make things more fun.  I can hear David Lloyd now, "pushes the ball deep into the outfield, looks like they want two, yes, they're going to ge...  hold on, the fielder's exploded, they're coming back for a third, the bowler will be fuming ..."   What's wrong with cricket as it has been played through history ?
 
I started watching cricket in the eighties, and my first hero was Robin Smith, a man whose square cut was so meatily thrashed that you feared the ball would explode.   Test cricket was all I wanted to watch, and long school summer holidays were only brightened by the summer series - a day lost to rain meant a day reading a book, walking the dog or similar tedious country-based pursuits.   When I heard last night that if the scores were tied, they'd play an extra over - the "Stanford super-over" - I think a small part of me died.   It also made me wonder what happened if scores were tied after the over.  The "Stanford Power Ball" ?   And if both sides hit it for four, the "Stanford Turbo-Toss" ? Somehow, I can think of a better use for those last three words.

Paul Sculpher

Test cricket is the greatest and most expert form of the game, but there are many forms of the game and most of them can, successfully, co-exist. Some will be taken seriously and used as a form to measure one player against another, perhaps from a different era, but others can be swiftly forgotten because the stats are meaningless when people have to play out of their style.

The Stanford stuff is a bastardisation, but it's mainly failed because it rained in Antigua and Stanford produced a slow wicket (which they didn't have enough knowledge of the game to understand). It's only a short step from a black bat to a black metal bat and that's the point where I stop watching. The Stanford organisation, despite their overwhelming generosity, would like to make cricket a non-stop pyrotechnic experience. What we've learned from this tournament is: It's a very fine balance between making cricket a little more explosive and it just not being the game of cricket any more.

Adam Corres