Twenty 20.

Any words or figures that have been discussed more of late?

The cliched 'Love it or hate it, you just cannot ignore it' cannot seem to apply more to anything else.

So does one love it? Or hate it? (Or miraculously, is the option of 'ignore it' still open!?)

While I have earlier sought to compare one-day cricket to a burger at a fast food joint (quick, filling and to the point), and test cricket to a five-course gourmet meal at a Five star hotel, (slow, elegant, sumptuous, and discerning) what then, is Twenty20?

A spicy quick masala puri laced with 'chaat malala' at the roadside chaat gaadi? Or am I being needlessly simplistic here?

As far as schools of thought go ('Test and one-day cricket is dead! ') or ('each have their own distinct places under the sun')I would tend to go with the latter.

While I would think that it would be hard not for the Twenty-20 influence to be felt in the playing styles in tests or one-dayers, I suspect that the impact on one-day cricket is likely to be more than the impact on test matches.

I certainly hope that the one-day style is influenced, for more often than not, there tends to be a template that one-day matches fall into - 'hit out' in the first fitteen, consolidate in the next twenty five, and again 'hit out' in the last ten. ('Hit out' one tends to use a little cautiously, because after twenty-20, one is never sure what the term would mean when applied to one-day cricket).

So let us all wait for the burger to come. Maybe it will have a strong dash of chaat masala to it ! Maybe that wouldnt be such a bad thing at all. Also, it would be an extremely brave team to apply this chaat masala influence to the five-course gourmet meal that test matches are.

And if some team does try that, we are in for some real real exciting times !

At the risk of sounding like an advertisement for a liquor company, who knows, maybe we are in for some good times ahead !