Twenty20 has been a shock to the system - View from the Lumley End

2:06pm Friday 20th June 2008

IN all sports, there are fans who go to extreme lengths to see every game in which their team plays, and more often than not, developing a sickeningly elitist attitude towards those who cannot reach their level of commitment.

It was then with some hypocritical horror that the walk down towards the Riverside before the England game elicited a similar response as I gazed upon the excited thousands and found myself questioning why on earth the crowds at Durham one-day games were at times as sparse as the hair on Neil Killeen's glinting head.

There is an element to this that is somewhat like asking why Darlington Football Club don't get crowds that would fill Wembley, but if there is such a groundswell of support for cricket, where is everyone else the rest of the year?

The game itself was at once thrilling for the knocks of Pietersen, Shah and Collingwood, but also a salutary reminder of why some fear 50 over cricket to be under threat from it's diminutive and occasionally vulgar little brother.

Despite the crowds, there is a feeling that with so many one-sided encounters, how often will people be satisfied to pay through the nose to watch it?

Clear evidence of this was the way in which the Barmy Army became more content to irk the stewards, cast in the role of the teachers unable to control their rowdy class, with trivialities rather than watching the game after McCullum's briefly promising knock came to an end.

Reports of the death of 50-over cricket seem greatly exaggerated, as certainly from an international perspective, those fans in the provinces are still out in force and embrace the atmosphere as much as anything.

On the domestic front, the early season success of Durham in the holy cash cow that is Twenty20 has been a shock to the system.

Even with the heavy investment in Morkel and Pollock, lingering doubts remained about the county that is still statistically the worst county side in the history of the competition, meaning any victory still feels as improbable as the script of family favourite John Candy vehicle Cool Runnings.

Despite seemingly being older than time itself, Shaun Pollock has looked every inch the all-time great bowler, while Albie Morkel has started to find his groove, exemplified by his epic destruction of the Lancashire bowling attack at Old Trafford.

At the time of writing, the four overs of teenage leg-spinner Scott Borthwick against Lancashire, seem to have got all concerned into something of a lather.

Sky's pundits were of course as responsible for this as anyone, loving as they do a fairytale, especially one they've televised, and even somewhat preposterously mumbling the words 'Shane Warne', like your Mam might if that were the only cricketer she'd ever heard of.

Having provided a conveyor belt of quality seamers over recent years, the one thing Durham have failed to produce is a spinner of note and how delightful it would be if it were that rarest of English things, a genuinely dangerous right-arm leg-spinner.

For Durham to reach the quarter-finals of the Twenty20 would be a massive achievement, but God forbid they should reach finals day at the Rose Bowl, as anyone still harbouring memories of the train trip to Lord's will testify, that the earliness of the start left many scarred and jibbering in the manner of a Vietnam vet.

A journey to Southampton may just push some over the edge, but the time to be worrying about how best to mainline caffeine straight into the blood stream is for another day.

Eating Out