It was that time of the millennium in India when nothing sold as much as a smart idea did. The boom that the IT sector had in the 90s was said to be on the wane or at least starting to. And much like 50-over cricket, it was on the look out for freshness. Conceiving start-ups and the idea of entrepreneurship was the new talk of the town. It wasn't quite different on the cricket front as well - the Twenty20 format was a novel idea and the world event in South Africa an ambitious start-up. While cricket remained a popular sport, other sports such as football were beginning to make a headway. Twenty20 was born as much out of a need as demand, and as every entity in the world has had to go through a battle for relevance, cricket too was starting to find itself at crossroads - or only beginning to.
10 YEARS OF WORLD T20 2007
World T20 @ 10 - Shaping the future
Through its thrill-a-minute offering, World T20 2007 managed to immediately pull an extra chair in the living rooms of everyone's houses. © Getty
Cricket had to be taken to newer places, to every living room, to all age-groups, to both genders too. And in times of decreasing attention span and exposure to more recreational means, Twenty20 became cricket's guinea pig, ready to lay itself on the experiment table and offer new possibilities. And thus an ICC World T20 was devised and planted safely in the most conducive conditions of South Africa. Not to forget, the horror of a disappointingly staged