The brainchild of the England Cricket Board’s marketing manager Stuart Robertson, Twenty20 cricket was created as a means of giving fence-sitting cricket fans more annoying gimmicks, faster-paced matches, and more exciting cricket than what was being offered in red-ball cricket and traditional 50 over cricket.

In hindsight, Robertson should’ve just waited 20 years for a new format, then BazBall could’ve replaced Test cricket.

Regardless, the T20 concept took flight on the dreaded date of Friday the 13th, 2003, with the inaugural round of the Twenty20 Cup (Now the T20 Blast) between the English (and Welsh) counties, and the Hampshire vs Sussex match at the Rose Bowl in Southampton had the honour of being the first T20 match to be broadcast on television (Sky Sports).

Fun fact, that Sky broadcast was one of the first that Nasser Hussain worked on as a broadcaster, shortly after he’d stood down as England captain, in preparation for his post-cricketing career that continues to this day.

Another fun fact – Sussex were one of the 7 counties that voted against the ECB’s proposal for the Twenty20 competition in 2002… The others were Middlesex, Yorkshire, Warwickshire, Somerset, Glamorgan and Northamptonshire.

As for the match, in front of a packed Rose Bowl on a glorious Friday, Sussex (The Sharks) won the toss and sent the hosts (The Hawks) in to bat, bowling Hampshire out for 153, but the Hawks bowled brilliantly in reply and held the Sharks to 7/149 to win by 5 runs, as Hampshire’s Ed Giddings became the pioneer for T20 death bowling by defending 10 off the last over against the dangerous Tim Ambrose, who top scored with 54 off 37 balls.

Here’s a bit of trivia, the first player to hit a 6 in a televised T20 match?

None other than Pakistan legend Wasim Akram, who batted at No.3 for Hampshire.

These were some of the illustrious names that played in that game:

The aforementioned Wasim Akram, Australian opener Simon Katich, Shane Warne’s good mate Dimitri Mascarenhas and England paceman Alan Mullally played for Hampshire, captained by former England batsman John ‘Creepy’ Crawley.

Future England wicketkeepers Matt Prior and Tim Ambrose, Western Australia’s favourite Zimbabwean Murray Goodwin, Pakistan legspinner Mushtaq Ahmed played for Sussex, who were captained by Chris ‘Grizzly’ Adams.

Eventually, with moments like a jacuzzi turning up on the sideline at Worcestershire, Nottinghamshire players posing topless for posters and Glamorgan fans turning up in pyjamas, the Twenty20 Cup became a success in England, and the MCC at Lord’s eventually got in on the act and allowed Middlesex to play T20 matches at the home of cricket in 2004, with the first match against Sussex on July 15 attracting a massive crowd of 27,509, the greatest non-final crowd at Lord’s since 1953.

After that, T20 cricket spread like wildfire worldwide:

– The first domestic Twenty20 competition outside of England was Pakistan’s National T20 Cup in April of 2005, which was succeeded by the Pakistan Super League in 2016.

– The first official T20 match in Australia was Western Australia against Victoria at the WACA on January 12, 2005, featuring the first sellout cricket match at the WACA in 24 years – WA won the match by 8 wickets, with the first Australian domestic T20 tournament (The KFC Twenty20 Big Bash) beginning at the end of 2005, eventually succeeded by the franchise-based Big Bash League in 2011.

– The first T20 international was a women’s T20 match between England and New Zealand on August 5, 2004, with New Zealand winning by 9 runs, and the first men’s T20 international was New Zealand vs Australia at Eden Park on February 17 2005, a match that was fairly light-hearted, as both teams wore 1980s retro kits, and Glenn McGrath impersonated Trevor Chappell on the last ball, leading to Billy Bowden giving him a red card.

Another highlight of that match was Ricky Ponting’s 98 off 55 balls, falling just short of becoming the first player to score a century in a T20 International, an honour that went to Chris Gayle at the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007.

– The England men played their first T20 International against Australia at the Rose Bowl in June of 2005, which England won by 100 runs, which is still Australia’s greatest losing margin by runs in a Twenty20 International.

– The first T20 World Cup took place in South Africa in September of 2007, won by India, featuring like Chris Gayle’s aforementioned century, and Yuvraj Singh whacking Stuart Broad for 6 sixes in an over, only the second instance of it occurring in international cricket.

– The Indian Premier League began in 2008, becoming the most popular domestic cricket league in the world, one of the richest sporting leagues in the world (Brand value $10.9 billion USD), while it also made history in 2010 as the first sporting event broadcast live on YouTube.

So there we go – 20 years of Twenty20 Cricket, and the way it’s going it’ll be