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A cricket match, a wise old scribe has written, is played in the minds of the opposing captains. Even in today’s changed world of T20 cricket? Hmmm…. Let’s see…
For a full century after Australia’s 45-run victory over England at Melbourne in the first-ever Test match in 1877, the statement remained true. But Test cricket spawned its first scion, 50-over cricket, in the 1970s.
And in the Oughts, the ICC launched its T20 World Cup—announcing to the world the coming of age of the oldest format’s grandchild, 20/20 cricket.
Not everyone, however, got the memo. Just before last month’s Lord’s Test, for instance, Geoff Boycott was still refusing to see as enrichment rather than contamination the inevitable incorporation into the Test arena of T20 practices.
First, the former England opener disparaged 2023 comments by some of his country squad “about being entertainers and how important it is to score quickly and thrill the crowds”.
Then, switching to his preferred prescriptive mode, he warned that “Test match cricket should not be about how many sixes you hit or how many runs you score in the fewest number of balls”.
Other people, says Valentino Singh, simply prefer purity or have “a completely closed mind”. They are still working with a 20th Century definition of “batting properly”. They attack batsmen for getting out trying to hit sixes. In a T20 game!
I put my hand up but I plead not guilty. I accused Nicholas Pooran of not batting properly in the World Cup game against England. I stand by that. You can’t bat conservatively for more than half the overs and then get out playing a nothing shot in the death overs.
I have also long taken strong objection to the former T20 captain’s persistent attempts to sell us all the misleading notion that West Indies are “a six-hitting team”. WI are not—not, at any rate, in the sense in which he means it.
In T20 cricket, the notion of a six-hitting team is virtually useless. It is only useful, I submit, for a team chasing a daunting target.
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868
You can justifiably feel you still have a chance, albeit slim, in the game if you can get the target to 36—or even better, 35!—by the end of the 19th over. But Yuvraj Singh, Herschelle Gibbs, Kieron Pollard or Jaskaran Malhotra on demand? Seriously? What are the chances?
Cricket is arguably the most individual of all team sports; the way each individual performs can have a huge impact on the eventual outcome of any match. But this is even more important in T20 cricket, where the entire team effort can be buttressed or undermined by the decisions made by each individual player.
Literally before and after each ball as I propose to show in the final installment.
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868
After my eye-opening exchange with Tino prior to the final, Roston Chase had been the Bassman in my head. With good reason. His is the name that spawned my most embarrassing moment.
I had not seen the trick question coming.
“Irresponsible!” I responded, when Tino asked about Chase’s dismissal in the game against New Zealand. “You don’t get out that way at 20 for 2.”
Photo: CWI Media
“It was a full toss,” he snapped, arguing that the batsman’s execution had failed him, not his approach. He had played the ball on its merit.
That had silenced me. But after watching the final with the Chaseman in my head, I had adjusted my view. Thanks to Virat Kohli and the albeit blinkered Boycott.
Tino was right—Chase had been let down by his execution. But his approach had also, I saw clearly, been flawed.
Photo: CWI Media
In a T20 game, batting properly requires consideration of a slew of factors, including the team’s plan for you. And Chase had lost sight of that.
More of a classical player than your typical white ball power-hitter or improviser, Chase resembles Kohli much more than, say, Rohit Sharma.
For Rohit, batting properly means going for the maximum number of runs on offer in the powerplay, come what may. Obviously, sixes help hugely. But, contrary to what Pooran would have us believe, it really is not simply about how many sixes you can hit.
Photo: ICC/ Getty
Rather, it’s about how many runs you can get, as Boycott says, in the fewest possible balls. I have no precise statistics to cite. But would it surprise anyone to find that a significant proportion of Rohit’s 257 tournament-leading runs came on the generally underpopulated on-side—even off balls pitched on or outside the off-stump?
For Kohli and Chase, batting properly also involves scoring as many runs as possible off the lowest number of balls. But it also means not getting out in a crisis.
True, a full toss in T20 cricket is potentially a six. At 20 for 2, 23 for 2 or 200 for 2. But cricket, even the T20 variety, is a team game.
Photo: CWI Media
So in a crisis—at 34 for 3, for example—the team needs you to settle for four, two, a single, even a dot ball.
But you cannot get out!
That’s where Chase let the side down. Sherfane Rutherford, a finisher, had to abandon his designated role and step into Chase’s boots. Which, thankfully, he did. To perfection.
Batting at #6, the Guyanese left-hander made 68 off 39 balls, batting exactly the way the West Indies expect Chase to.
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868
In the final, Rohit made nine, dismissed holing out at 23 for 1. It upset the plan but did not torpedo it. Man-of-the-Match Kohli played his part.
In a chanceless 76 off 59 balls, he hit 14 off his first five balls, 36 off the next 43 and then 26 off the next 11. He hit a boundary in the fourth over, his next in the 18th. After being 34 for 3, India still made a fighting—indeed a winning!—176.
Against New Zealand, despite batting at #6, Rutherford came to the crease before the end of the powerplay. He made the required adjustment to his approach, his assigned role.
Photo: Nicholas Bhajan/ Wired868
He worked out that second-stringers would have to bowl the last two overs and ensured he was around to savage them. Almost 40 off the last 12 balls took WI to a fighting—indeed, a winning!—149.
Which proves nothing. But it certainly suggests that, at least in T20 cricket, 12 heads are better than one.
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Earl Best taught cricket, French, football and Spanish at QRC for many years and has written consistently for the Tapia and the Trinidad and Tobago Review since the 1970’s.
He is also a former sports editor at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad Express and is now a senior lecturer in Journalism at COSTAATT.
