Picking a T20 XI from the 1980s and '90s
81 All Out - A Cricket Podcast - A podcast by 81 All Out
T20 started in the early 2000s but what if the format was invented 15 years earlier. Who were the players who would have excelled in the shorter format? We decided to pick a T20 side from the era before the IPL and debated how Aravinda de Silva and Brian Lara might have changed their game for T20s. And if players like Ricardo Powell and Adrian Kuiper would have had more illustrious careers than they did. Support 81allout on Ko-Fi Talking Points: The evolution of ODIs and T20s - and how both took about 20 years ago mature Would players like Sunil Narine have been as big a star if not for T20s? The West Indian legacy in terms of accelerating the T20 evolution Which players from the past would have thrived in this format? Would you have heard much more of Alistair Brown and Michael Di Venuto had T20s been around earlier? Would Aravinda de Silva have continued his Mad Max avatar in T20s? Ricardo Powell, Atul Bedade, Robin Singh - the superstars who could have been Players like Lance Klusener who rigorously practiced range-hitting The value of a good googly bowler in T20s Participants: Siddhartha Vaidyanathan (@sidvee) Mahesh Sethuraman (@cornerd) Ashoka (@ABVan) Deepauk Murugesan (@complicateur) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Buy The Summer Game by Gideon Haigh (republished by 81allout) India (hardback) | India (paperback) | India (e-copy) Australia (paperback, e-copy) USA (hardback, paperback, e-copy) UK (hardback, paperback, e-copy) Canada (hardback, paperback, e-copy) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Related: Ijaz Ahmed's 84-ball 139 v India in Lahore in 1997 - YouTube When Surrey smashed the 50-over World Record thanks to Alistair Brown's 268 - YouTube When Kapil Dev hit four sixes in a row to avoid the follow-on at Lord's - YouTube Atul Bedade's big day in Sharjah - YouTube