Short and sweet, T10 jostles for foothold with new events

NEW DELHI : A franchise-based cricket tournament gets underway in Zimbabwe next week continuing an ambitious expansion of the sport's 10-overs format, with its promoter asserting that the 90-minute game could one day rival the popularity of soccer.

T20 cricket has emerged as the game's most popular format spawning mushrooming leagues around the world, while 50-overs cricket faces an uncertain fate, especially after the Marylebone Cricket Club questioned its relevance outside the ODI World Cup.

The shorter forms of the game include The Hundred, a 100-ball competition launched by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2021, which is struggling to gain a foothold in the game's increasingly crowded landscape.

Shaji Ul Mulk, chairman of T Ten Global Sports, which is pushing the T10 format's expansion, said cricket must pack its drama and action into 90 minutes if it is to rival the popularity of soccer.

While a 20-overs match takes about three hours, an ODI lasts nearly eight while most tests are played over five days.

"We thought, 'Why can't cricket be played in 90 minutes?' and in 90 minutes you can only do 10 overs," Mulk, the Dubai-based head of a business conglomerate, told Reuters.

"That's how T10 came into play."

His company has partnered with Zimbabwe Cricket to launch the Zim Afro T10, which begins next Thursday in Harare and features, among others, England's World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan.

Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt owns one of the five franchises in the competition.

Mulk's company has also teamed up with Sri Lanka Cricket to stage a T10 tournament there in December.

Cricket West Indies became the first ICC full member to host a 10-overs tournament last year, although T Ten Global Sports was not involved.

OLYMPIC