5 over game = legitimate?

The Twenty20 season hasn’t got off to the best start this year, but I have to say I am enjoying it. It has recently been marred from some peculiar and football-hooligan-esque behaviour at the game between Middlesex and Hampshire, where Middlesex has their dressing room broken in to by thieves who stole wallets and other items and Hampshire had their tour bus pelted with stones. In addition, no single Twenty20 match (so-called because each side bats for, yep, 20 overs) has actually managed 20 overs a side due to horrendous weather conditions in an unusually wet June. Global warming and the end of the world aside, it has led to some very interesting games, where some matches have been reduced to just 10 overs each, where the already frantic slogathon becomes, well even more frantic.

One curious thing caught my attention, though, and that is, if a 10 over match (i.e., a Twenty20 already reduced to 10 overs per side) is further interrupted by rain, then it is possible for Messrs Duckworth and Lewis can be called in to action, on the proviso that 5 overs have been faced. 5 overs! This means that a 1st class match in a real competition with a trophy and everything not to mention (assuming the same rules apply) the International Twenty20 cup, we could realistically have matches, which spectators have paid real money to come and watch, decided in a mere 30 balls per side. This could theoretically represent between 50p-£1 per ball for the spectator, which isn’t likely to represent good value for money in anyone’s book.

Of course it’s never just as simple as just postponing the game to another day, considering how hectic the schedule already is. But there has to be a balance between playing at all costs and maintaining the integrity of the game. Or maybe this is the balance? What do you think?