Twenty20 cricket is riding a tidal wave of popularity — not just in Pakistan but throughout the cricket world. There is, of course, the convenience: the game is over in three to four hours and can easily be scheduled for prime time viewing. But what makes Twenty20 cricket truly captivating is its sheer entertainment value. It stimulates cricketing pleasure zones you didn’t even know you had. The history of Twenty20 internationals is still very young — the first such match, between Australia and New Zealand, only took place in February 2005 — yet already there is a growing sense of Pakistan’s pre-eminence in this format specially after becoming T20 world champions.

Despite our team’s notorious volatility, Pakistan supporters have started anticipating Twenty20 fixtures with a confidence that the team will do well. Even against formidable opponents such as India or Australia, there is a sense that the team will more than hold its own. This is very different from the way our cricket public approaches Tests and ODIs, where a devastating loss is the usual default expectation.

This subjective sense of comfort is supported by hard data. Pakistan has played 25 Twenty20 internationals thus far and won 19, for a winning percentage of 78 per cent that is head and shoulders above any other team. Of the teams that have played a minimum of 10 Twenty20 matches, the next best are Sri Lanka and South Africa (67 per cent each), followed by India (56 per cent), West Indies (50 per cent), Australia (48 per cent), New Zealand (42 per cent), England (40 per cent), and Bangladesh (23 per cent). Add to this the fact that Pakistan have been finalists in both World Twenty20 championships held thus far, including champions in the most recent one, and it is reasonable to conclude that Pakistan has rapidly emerged as the king of the Twenty20 format.

These statistics may be startling, yet their explanation is straightforward. The frantic pace of Twenty20 cricket is a natural fit for our team’s devil-may-care temperament. Traditional Pakistani attributes that in longer formats are considered liabilities — such as unorthodox technique and a narrow concentration span — have become powerful assets in Twenty20 cricket. And this will sound blasphemous to the purist, but the truth is that even the culture of our youth cricket, which is dominated by taped tennis balls and contentious street battles, is an ideal nursery for producing players adept at international Twenty20 cricket.

Nevertheless, challenges are looming. Professional outfits such as Australia, India, South Africa and Sri Lanka are rapidly deploying specialist Twenty20 outfits, and great effort is required of Pakistan — from players and administrators alike — to stay ahead of the pack. There is also the threat that focusing on Twenty20 cricket will erode our strengths in Test cricket, which are modest to begin with. Still, Twenty20 cricket is by most accounts poised to be the dominant future of world cricket and if Pakistan becomes a super-specialist of this genre alone, it probably won’t be such a bad thing.