Three high jinx thrillers, all with India emerging on top, may have just been the tonic to kick start the Twenty20 revolution in India.
While not all Indians would be converts, the spectacle of Twenty20 cricket with all its big hitting and more importantly - India winning, will have generate a sufficiently large audience for this, the newest format of the game.
And make the BCCI its newest converts and possibly its most ardent devotees.
Which will go a long way in ensuring the health of Twenty20 cricket for some time to come.
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The one factor that was on display in all of the games was the element of fearlessness in the approach to batting. Because of the truncated format of the game, batsmen have to swing for the rafters from ball one. And wickets in hand is no longer key; rather, it was the runs on board that matter more.
It is this fearlessness that I think will have the most impact on the other two forms of the game.
The Sri Lankan experiment of going hammer and tongs in the first 15 overs of an ODI opened the game to the possibility of pinch hitters and big shots and slower balls and low full tosses. And once cricketers changed their approach, and their thinking, it had a direct bearing on Test cricket.
What Twenty20 will do, or I hope it will, is take away the number of overs in Fifty50 cricket from the equation. Teams will be more concerned with runs on the board, irrespective of the number of overs it takes - if a team targets 350 as a score to reach in the first innings, they will throw their bats around to get to that target irrespective of the fact that they would have collectively lasted 45 overs instead of the full 50.
The old mantra of take the score at the end of 30 overs and double it may soon be replaced by score as much as possible in the power plays and then look to double it in the remaining 30 overs. What this will mean is that the "slow" phase of the game ( between overs 21 thru 40) will get shorter and shorter with time.
Power hitting will become the norm but conversely containment will go out of the window. I do not believe teams will play to contain the opposition on the field. Rather, it will be wickets that will matter more and this will be reflected in bowling and fielding strategies.
The one other thing that may change, and this depends on how deeply entrenched Twenty 20 gets, will be the emphasis on specialists. With "options" and "depth" becoming bywords in the shortest version of the game , I wont be too surprised to see teams fielding ( or emphasizing on ) players with more than one string in their bow as the norm.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Paradigm shift!
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7 comments:
I don't agree that containment will go out of the window.
Containment comes into the picture when batsmen value their wickets. In Twenty20, with 11 batsmen and only 20 overs, it doesn't matter if teams lose 3 wickets in the first 5.
There will be no "bowling and fielding strategies" - how can there be when batsmen are taking chances every second ball?
Kartikeya,
Because Twenty20causes a change in thinking with respect to batting and bowling, what is to say that this mindset will not change and get reflected in 50 over cricket?
Bowling and fielding strategies come into play because batsmen are taking chances - there are always some strategy or another in play even when batsmen are not chancing their arms :)
Cheers
homer
its a repeat of my comments at prem's post but i thought its better placed here...
our campaign of T20 till now has established what youth can do...that what change of few personnels (read big 3) can do to a team…
not so distant past we were discussing our team as “cant bat, cant bowl and cant field” but this tournament has proved the fact that increasingly ODIs too is becoming the game for young ones…
we have fielded like anything...the catch of DK and run out of Kemp by RS was the eye opener for everybody...we ran like anything between wickets and everything seems to be going in right direction…
this show must encourage our rudderless selectors to see the light and lay a platform…
and what tough opponents than Aussies and Pak to gauge what metal they are made of...we may loose some games but will definetly know by the end of these series who are left standing to be counted…
straight point,
the big ticket here is to sustain the run that the kids have started. One off performances are not a barometer for the future.
Its a start- lets hope we build from here on :)
Cheers
i know its early days, homer...
but pattern is there for everyone to see...specially fielding and running between wickets...
its no coincidence either that we are averaging at least one run out in a match...
and this can't be termed as one off performance...
we have recovered twice from 3 or 4 to nothing the thing is that with no seniors around youngsters have taken responsibility got some space to unwind themselves...
that after playing the innings of his life yuvi was not there for SA match and we not only coped with it but showed no sign of panic is testimony to teams spirits under new captain...
and if we dont give them chances against tough opponents how we will come to know about their temperament, skills etc..
and what RD, SRT, SG will achieve in these series except for some Brownie points against them???
and we will be back to same lethargy on field and running between wickets...and i am not sure if we the viewers will like it after watching the kind of display our current team has put on field...
straight point,
we still dont hold our catches as evidenced in the England game - there is plenty of scope for improvement and the question remains as to whether what was seen in the shortest form of the game can be replicated in the longer versions.
Cheers
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