Nothing is set in stone anymore as the format keeps overriding templates to push cricket’s boundaries
Kolkata: In the first 50 years or so of its existence, cricket didn’t change much. It remained textbook. Next fifty years, it tried to keep up with the times—covered pitches, helmets for batters, six-ball overs, no rest days—but nothing too over the top. One-day cricket arrived with coloured clothing, white balls, dark sight screens and multiple camera angles but it still hadn’t started tinkering with the game for a good 20 years. Seismic, however, were the changes the game underwent after T20 waded into the scene.
Modern T20s demand no more than one anchor in the team with other batters going big throughout the innings. (AFP)
All very innocuously of course. Remember the first T20 international between Australia and New Zealand in 2005? Players wearing floppy hats, aviators and retro style shirts, making it seem very much a casual one-off affair, T20 was a format no one felt could have had a foreseeable future. But the first ICC T20 World Cup was held in two years. In another year, the IPL. First match, and the format had already jolted the foundations of the game. No one realised that better than Rahul Dravid and Wasim Jaffer as they looked trapped in the hangover of one-day cricket, trying to muster a response to Brendon McCullum’s scintillating 73-ball 158. That set the tone to the overhaul of cricket.
Key to the changes was the brevity game, slowly nullifying the need for pre-decided batting orders, bowling combinations and field placements. This is a format where there are 10 wickets available to use in 20 overs, meaning you can afford to lose one wicket every two overs, meaning 60/3 after the first six overs is actually a good score for the batting team. The risk factor becomes almost zero when you think on these lines, but not every franchise or international team made this transition at the same time. Especially those with batters who believed that consuming 20 balls to settle was acceptable even if that meant conceding one-sixth of the total quota of deliveries for meagre returns.
Which is why the Indian side that won the T20 World Cup in 2024 was ideologically far removed from the one that was schooled in the game by England in the 2022 semi-final. All because the top-three batters believed in playing anchor-style cricket. It’s still relevant, but with terms and conditions. Now, one anchor has to be adequately compensated with another who can play shots regardless of the quality of the balls delivered. Like Rohit Sharma, playing perfect foil to Virat Kohli at the T20 World Cup. Now, that’s the only way he bats across formats.
Unconventional is the new convention. Batters now regularly practise ramp and scoop shots. Think big too. Quick singles are acceptable, maybe the occasional twos. But to deliver adequately, you have to target the maximum. And that’s not something all technically correct batters can achieve at will. Gaps started to show, till it necessitated the creation of the Test specialist. Multiformat specialists arrived a few years later. And now, we have a torrent of T20 specialists. Allrounders are in demand, as is flexibility in strategy. Matchups mandated left-right batting pairs, till Gautam Gambhir made it a norm. Middle-over enforcer, both in batting and bowling, is a thing now. Out went the idea that the two most incisive bowlers need to start the bowling because who would care in a world where teams are ready to lose wickets as long as run rates don’t suffer?
Bowlers thus had to think on their feet. Mere yorkers weren’t working anymore and so slower, wider variations were added in due course. The slower bouncer and the carrom ball were game changers. And more often were spinners asked to open the bowling because taking pace off the ball was the only way to stop batters from getting momentum on the ball. Batters had to rethink their approach as well, given this isn’t a format where an individual hundred or fifty would necessarily shape a win. Ask Jos Buttler. Or KL Rahul. More valuable become those cameos, a 10-ball 30, or a 20-ball 45.
Very rarely though would come along a thinker of the game, someone like MS Dhoni who knew exactly how long he could draw out the chase before finishing it with two or three big overs. And even he couldn’t perfect it all the time. No one has. Which shows how fluid T20 has become. It isn’t a format of cricket. It’s a different sport altogether.
