"If we're only going to rely on ourselves as a player or a person based on performance, I think that's a slippery slope."

JP Duminy, who played in the early days of T20 cricket and now works as a coach across franchise environments, does not say it lightly. The question - about pace, pressure and what the current T20 landscape demands of its players - draws him somewhere deeper than tactics.

"So the one thing players really need to answer for themselves is why they play the game. If you can answer that with conviction, it gives you a much stronger base for consistency," he says in a chat with Cricbuzz.

Shane Watson, who has also featured in the earlier versions of the T20 World Cup and now a coach himself, approaches the same territory from a different angle. "There's no question that modern T20 cricket is very unforgiving at times," he says. "One not good innings where you soak up a lot of balls at the wrong time - with power hitters waiting in the dugout - or one very expensive over, can change the game in a huge way, to a point where you feel like you've lost the game for your team."

Between Duminy's concern about identity and Watson's reflection on exposure sits the modern T20 cricketer.

In current T20 cricket, performance windows are brief, judgement is instant, and opportunities can open or close within the space of a few overs. For players operating in this environment, the line between what they do and who they are has grown increasingly thin. Momentum is fragile. Confidence can build in two boundaries and drain away in two deliveries. And because the format rarely allows time to reset, mistakes stay in the mind longer than they do on the scoreboard.

"I tend to look at it through momentum," Duminy says. "You're either trying to gain momentum or maintain momentum, because momentum creates confidence. Two back-to-back boundaries change how you feel immediately. But within an over - even two or three balls - momentum can shift. That's why the margin for error has reduced. The game is constantly about finding ways to stay on top, or get back on top."

Watson agrees on the volatility, though he frames it through exposure. T20, he says, now operates under a constant microscope. "I suppose it probably comes down to just the exposure of T20 cricket now. There is more of a microscope consistently on IPL games or T20 World Cup games. But even in Test cricket, if you drop a catch or make a mistake at the wrong time, there is a huge microscope on you. Players are super aware that there's going to be scrutiny. That's part of learning how to let it go - from a mindset perspective - and just give yourself the best chance of performing at your best, not worrying about the ways you could fail."

If Duminy's concern is that performance can start to define identity, Watson's is that players are learning to operate under constant visibility. Together, their views sketch a format that does not merely move quickly, but evaluates quickly - and often publicly. Neither encountered that environment at the start of their career.

Duminy has experienced the shift from both ends. He played T20 cricket when it was still finding its feet, when it was an entertaining sideshow rather than the centre of gravity. Now, as a coach, he works with players for whom the format is not an alternative, but the primary arena in which careers are made.

Watson's memory of those early years is similar. "Initially T20 cricket definitely was a novelty event," he says. "The first T20 - Australia and New Zealand game, it was just a bit more fun than anything. But after the 2007 World Cup, that was when things started to get a lot more real. And then obviously that fed into the 2008 IPL. That was really when it became clear this is a serious third format."

Even then, he recalls, bilateral T20 internationals still felt like an add-on. "Outside of the T20 World Cups, internationals were more seen as just a token game thrown in at the end of a series. That's where a lot of players got rested as well. But the World Cups were different. Everyone wanted to win those. That's what really set it apart."

For Duminy, the moment T20 began shaping careers was when its ideas started spilling into other formats. "The time it really started shaping careers was when it influenced all the other formats. It wasn't just a case anymore of two or three slips trying to nick someone off. T20 encouraged exploring various things.

"The type of shots you played changed. It wasn't just about a high elbow or leaving outside off stump. You could use your crease more, advance down the wicket, manipulate the field. Once we really grasped how strike rates and run rates per over influenced the T20 game, and transferred that into the other formats, that's when it started influencing the general game."

What shifted was not simply technique, but value systems. Scoring rates, once incidental to batting well, began carrying weight of their own. Bowlers were judged not only on wickets but on control across phases. Time itself became a measurable currency.

And around the same period, life beyond cricket began to move differently too. When the first T20 World Cup burst into life in 2007, smartphones were not yet extensions of the hand. Social media existed, but it did not yet dictate attention spans. Cricket's calendar, though busy, still allowed pauses. T20 felt like a jolt - something to sample rather than inhabit.

That framing no longer holds.

A T20 match fits into an evening the way a Netflix episode does - and that's not coincidence so much as symptom. Both are products of the same cultural moment: the demand for intensity inside a fixed, manageable window. Test cricket still rewards memory and context; T20 fits more comfortably around fractured schedules and shorter spans of focus. It mirrors a world where concentration is shorter, distractions are constant and results are demanded quickly.

Watson sees that shift clearly in the players coming through. "There's no question that T20 cricket has evolved at the same time life has become more fast-paced," he says. "Shorter concentration spans are front and centre. Young batters coming through now have really only known one way of playing - taking the game on.

"When I was coming through, T20 cricket wasn't around. I played my first T20 game at 23. My skills were built around being the best Test batter I could be. One-day cricket was an extension of that. But now young players are exposed to T20 from a very young age. Their skill sets are developed around taking risks. They don't see it as high risk because that's what they've grown up doing."

That generational exposure extends to bowlers too, he adds, and may even influence career choices - particularly around the physical demands of Test cricket versus the shorter format. "Fast bowlers in particular make a decision to push their bodies to a limit to try and push to play Test cricket because there's certainly a lot more chances of getting injured from a stress and overuse injury perspective. So that's what I'm most fascinated about, how things are going to evolve in that regard." For a generation raised on T20, that calculation is increasingly pointed - not just about formats, but about what kind of career is worth building, and at what cost.

Technology has accelerated that rewiring further. Where T20 once relied almost entirely on instinct, it now runs alongside real-time analysis.

"Every team's got an analyst now," Watson says. "There's no question there are great insights that can be used - selection, match-ups, exposing weaknesses. But the biggest challenge is blending the data with human beings who are actually playing the game. Data can be compelling about one player, but they might just be different on the day because they're human. The coaches and franchises that really blend the two - the data and the human element - will have the most success over the next five to ten years."

Duminy frames the same tension in quieter terms. "Some teams are more data-driven, some are more data-informed. There's still a strong reliance on gut feel. There's a constant bounce between the two. What data has really done is influence how we look at certain parts of the game and how those parts influence results - PowerPlay, middle overs, death overs. We now recognise where we're doing well and where we're falling short.

The implications stretch directly into selection. "So as an example, in the PowerPlayfrom a batting perspective, if you are ahead of 140% strike rate, you are then probably in the top tier of potentially getting selected in various T20 teams. Similarly at the death and PowerPlay, strike rates in terms of ball, that allows for you to be picked up in various teams. So I'd say that that has a strong influence. Those numbers carry real weight now," says Duminy.

The modern T20 cricketer, therefore, operates within a compressed field: accelerated tempo, visible scrutiny, statistical evaluation and shrinking margins. That compression carries quieter costs. Performances are increasingly consumed in fragments. Highlights travel faster than full innings. A cameo of 20 off six balls can trend before the dressing-room door has closed. Reputations that once formed over tours can now tilt in a single evening. In such an environment, separating identity from output becomes harder.

"I think this is a very powerful question," Duminy says about the younger players and the speed of the world around them. "You see it in how they approach risk and decision-making. But it goes deeper than that. It's a question of identity. If we're only relying on ourselves as players or people based on performance, that's a slippery slope. So the question is: why do I play the game? If you're only doing it for praise or money, that's short-lived. But how do we leave the game in a better state than when we started it?"

Franchise cricket complicates that further. In a system built on short contracts and constant churn, stability is provisional. Belonging has to be rebuilt every season, sometimes every tournament, even as performance is judged instantly.

"In the franchise world, it can lend itself to not having as much emotional investment as when you're playing for your country," Duminy says. "You're bouncing around from team to team, almost paycheck to paycheck. But we all want to belong. If you can create that sense of belonging and allow players to feel safe, you bring out the best in people. We are people first, before players."

The format that began as novelty now shapes not just how cricket is played, but how it is experienced - internally and externally. In 2007, T20 hinted at where the game might be headed. Today it feels firmly of its time: fast-moving, tightly packed, rarely allowing space to pause. Whether that represents progress depends on what one believes cricket should be.

For Duminy, it always comes back to the same question. "I think the risk is that we lose our identity. What cricket means to us - the love for the game, the spirit of it. That it becomes an in-and-out experience. What can I get from this, rather than what can I give to it."

Acceleration, after all, is not only about speed. It is about what survives it. In T20's relentless world - of contracts, match-ups and instant verdicts - identity is the one thing that cannot be outsourced or optimised. And in the age of T20, survival may depend less on strike rates and more on whether players can hold on to who they are while everything around them refuses to slow down.