BEIJING: Imagine a middle-aged American pleading the cause of cricket, wanting it to become an Olympic discipline once it has been abridged to Twenty20, the game’s newest, shortest and most exciting version.
A chance meeting with Frank Hawke in a restaurant revealed that the man from Arizona picked up the rudiments of cricket while watching one-dayers in Taiwan and Hong Kong on television.
“I fell in love with 50-over matches instantly’, said the Beijing-based regional chairman of a western global company. “Twenty20 is even more exciting, barely a three-hour affair good enough to become an Olympic sport.”
Basically, a baseball player, Hawke finds his favorite sport bearing some resemblance to cricket.
“Both cricket and baseball have long traditions. It is the bounden duty of those at the helm to convince the International Olympic Committee that cricket (Twenty20) has all the ingredients to become an Olympic sport,” he said.
Ravi Shastri, a former Indian Test cricketer and now a well-known TV broadcaster (he was the only guest Olympic torchbearer in Muscat, the only city in the Middle East to enjoy the distinction), was possibly the first to bat for Twenty20’s inclusion in the Olympics following the roaring success of the inaugural IPL which took cricket-crazy India by storm recently.
Anil Wadhwa, India’s ambassador in Muscat, a cricket fanatic who had served twice in Beijing, is a great advocate of Twenty20 becoming an Olympic sport.
“Yes, it is my burning desire to see Twenty20 finding its way to the Olympics. And it is only being reasonably pragmatic to expect so’, said the senior envoy while recalling his stints in Beijing.
“I along with some fellow diplomats from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Carribean, Australia and New Zealand were trying to set up their own mini-World Cup cricket tournament.
We realized the dream in 1984 when the first such tournament was held in a beautuful stadium in Beijing with the active encouragement of the Chinese Ministry of Sports. The idea was to encourage the Chinese to learn about cricket,’’he said.
Pankaj Khimji, a member of Oman Cricket Club, the state-supported official body promoting cricket in the sultanate, was equally forceful in his argument.
“Cricket has now been condensed to an acceptable level of Twenty20 and more so to an intensively competitive level.
“By this I mean it generates the energy and athleticism seldom seen in the game before. An Olympiad too stands for athleticism at its zenith.Twenty20 examplifies just that.
“The game’s following too is now at an all-time high and ranks among the highest in terrestrial TV coverage,’’ Khimji said.
Sajid Kabir Khan, an ex-English county player and a friend of Imran Khan now spending his 24th year in Oman, said Twenty20 has given a new edge to cricket, initially a five-day affair involving ‘’22 flannelled fools’’.
Hawke, married to a Chinese, is a well-versed man. He plans to travel to Muscat for the 2010 Asian Beach Games, after reading about the fast growing cosmopolitan city in “Oman in Beijing’, a special publication produced by Times of Oman launched here the other day by the Embassy of the Sultanate of Oman. Hawke enjoyed reading Khushwant Singh, singing praises of Muscat during his maiden visit to Oman.
