June 13, 2003 — Faced with dwindling crowd support and falling sponsorship, in 2003 the England Cricket Board were looking around almost desperately for something to reverse their fortunes. In response, their marketing manager, Stuart Robertson, proposed a new fast-paced form of the game in which each team would be restricted to 20 overs. The chairmen of the county cricket clubs were sceptical, but voted 11-7 in favour of the idea. English county teams played the first official Twenty20 matches on 13th June that year, with one of them, Hampshire v Sussex, being shown live on television at 5pm. An unconvinced Daily Mail commented: “Whoever chose the traditionally unlucky Friday the 13th to launch this bold format had better hope there is nothing to the superstition. We will never know how the legendary Mr Grace would have reacted, but the rest of the cricketing world enthusiastically embraced the new format, complete with its American-style cheerleaders, flame-throwers and wild celebrations. It all led in 2007 to the first T20 World Cup (officially the ICC World Twenty20), a fast and furious knock-out contest between 16 international teams. The 2024 T20 World Cup is being jointly hosted for the first time in the USA and the West Indies in an enlarged twenty team format, proving beyond doubt the format's power to grow the game. The West Indies have a very proud history in the sport having won the first two 50 over Cricket World Cups in 1975 and 1979. Their team is selected from fifteen different Caribbean and South American nations and territories. Many of the wildly enthusiastic supporters might agree with playwright Harold Pinter who once said: “I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on Earth – certainly greater than sex, although sex isn’t too bad either.”