This is not to fetishise the spectator in isolation. The spectator is needed to keep the cricket honest. As Indian administrators found when they sought to take the game to third-party venues like Toronto, it was not just that the contest became less keen. That phase overlapped in a sense with Indian cricket’s darkest phase, with rumours of match-fixing and rampant apathy threatening to drive away even the television audience. You have to be even a marginal follower of any sport to know the importance of live spectators. If Twenty20 establishes that, it will have done more than make the cash registers hum.
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