Cricket is a sport which is currently undergoing a rapid and dramatic transformation. Traditionally thought of as an English summer game, limited in appeal to Britain and its Commonwealth, cricket has, in the past a few years, achieved a global profile. This is largely due to the development of a new TV-friendly format of the game: Twenty20 cricket. Indeed, through the economic and media interests promoting the Indian Premier League (IPL), the world’s richest Twenty20 tournament, cricket has belatedly ‘gone global’. The rapid rise of the IPL underlines that the economic and political characters within cricket are no longer the traditional elites in metropolitan centres but the businessmen of India and the media entrepreneurs world-wide who seek to shape new audiences for the game and create new marketing opportunities on a global scale.

The contributions in this book fall into two broad categories. There are firstly those which explore the rapid growth of Twenty20, particularly the motors of change and the new directions that cricket is taking as a result of the Twenty20 revolution. Secondly, there are a number of contributions which chart the impact of Twenty20 on traditional elements of the game.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Contents

1. Introduction: Twenty20 and the future of cricket 2. The IPL and the Indian domination of global cricket 3. Cricket for people who don’t like cricket?: Twenty20 as expression of the cultural and media zeitgeist 4. Twenty20 as Media Event 5. Twenty20, global disembedding, and the rise of the ‘portfolio player’ 6. Twenty20 and the changing face of Australian cricket 7. Test Match Special, Twenty20 and the future of cricket 8. The Reverse Sweep 9. ‘The four-day game doesn’t pay the bills’: Leicestershire, 2010 – 11: A case study in the contemporary political economy of county cricket 10. Game For Hire: Twenty20 and the New Cricenary 11. Going upstairs: The decision review system – velvet revolution or thin edge of an ethical wedge?

Author Bio

Chris Rumford is Professor of Political Sociology and Global Politics in the department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, where he is also co-Director of the Centre for Global and Transnational Politics. Previous publications include Cosmopolitan Spaces: Europe, Globalization, Theory (2008) and Cricket and Globalization (2010).