Cricket 2.0

by Tim Wigmore

  Taming domestic leagues was one thing. The West Indies, the World Cup champions in 2012 and 2016, had the most economical death bowling of any team across the 2012, 2014 and 2016 tournaments.

  Bowling also underpinned Pakistan’s remarkable run in international cricket from April 2016. In the following 34 months, Pakistan won 29 of their 33 matches, rising to number one in the T20 rankings.

  This brilliant run was founded on a clear and consistent strategy. The foundation of their approach was to win the toss and bat – relying on their defensive strength, with the ball and in the field, to defend even sub-par totals. Across those 33 matches Pakistan won the toss 18 times and chose to bat first 61% of the time in an era when chasing was in vogue. Despite recording a lower average first innings score than India, Australia and England in this period, they successfully defended their score in 18 of the 22 matches when they batted first.

  Pakistan had both a strong bowling attack and a deep one. No team averaged less with the ball than their 17.81 runs per wicket, and they had eight bowlers averaging under 23 in this period. This diverse array of bowlers – including three left-arm quicks, two right-arm quicks, two off-spinners, one left-arm spinner and one leg-spinner – enabled Pakistan to tailor their attack to different conditions and tailor match-ups in a way that exploited the weaknesses of opposing batting line-ups.

  The bowling attack was supported brilliantly by their fielders – only Australia had a higher catch success percentage and saved more runs in the field per match. They also used home advantage shrewdly. When hosting the world champions West Indies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2016, they deliberately moved the boundaries out as far as possible, and prepared slow wickets to negate the West Indies’ boundary hitting; a series of batsmen were then caught a few yards in from the rope. Pakistan won all 11 games they played in the UAE from April 2016 to February 2019.

  In the process they vindicated a philosophy espoused by John Wright, a coach who won the 2013 IPL with Mumbai Indians and had success at Derbyshire by building bowling-heavy teams. ‘I’ve subscribed to the Brian Clough theory that there’s no point scoring six if you let in seven. I like the consistency of a good defensive set-up which is your bowling and fielding. Sometimes your batting can be up and down.’

  The most fundamental reason for the importance of bowlers was the nature of their usage compared to batsmen. While batsmen could bat for an entire innings and face upwards of 60 balls, in practice the best batsmen were not active for any longer in a match than the best bowlers were. The most prolific T20 batsman ever, Chris Gayle, faced 23 balls an innings – the same number that Sunil Narine, the pre-eminent T20 bowler, bowled. At their best top batsmen can influence much more of a match, but they are a riskier proposition. They can get out first ball, or barely get any time to bat at all. In contrast top bowlers can, and normally will, deliver 24 balls in a match. Batsmen have no second chances; bowlers have 24 chances. On a good day a batsman can define an entire match but a batsman’s good day is rarer than a bowler’s good day.

  Rahul Dravid, a legend of Indian cricket who captained his country and RCB in the IPL before assuming a coaching role at Rajasthan Royals, believed the importance of bowling over batting was most clearly illustrated by the role of the number seven in the team. ‘There are enough statistics and data to prove that your number seven, on average, is playing something like eight to ten deliveries per match,’ he explained. ‘But a bowler at number seven can actually influence the game a lot more because he can bowl 24 balls.’

  This basic framework meant that batting was ‘strong-link dependent’, and bowling was ‘weak-link dependent’. This meant that a team’s batting would often be as strong as their best one or two players who could in theory bat for the majority of the innings. In the 2016 IPL Virat Kohli and A.B. de Villiers – two of the world’s best batsmen – recorded a record T20 partnership of 229 for Royal Challengers Bangalore. Between them they faced 107 of RCB’s 120 balls and with almost no help from their teammates they powered their team towards a massive total.

  In contrast no bowler can bowl more than 24 balls and at least five bowlers must bowl if the 20 overs are to be completed. This meant that a team’s bowling would often only be as strong as their weakest link. In the 2018 IPL final Chennai Super Kings (CSK) chased a target of 179 against Sunrisers Hyderabad despite only scoring 41 runs off the eight overs bowled by Sunrisers’ best two bowlers, Rashid Khan and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Shane Watson, who scored a brilliant match-winning hundred, knew that if he could see off Rashid and Kumar he could capitalise against Sunrisers’ weaker options. Watson was on nought after ten balls, opting to simply block against Bhuvneshwar. But later in the innings he made up his lost ground, targeting Sandeep Sharma, Siddharth Kaul, Carlos Brathwaite and Shakib Al Hasan. CSK scored 137 runs off the 10.3 overs bowled by those four bowlers and won the match with nine balls to spare.

  In this respect batting, which was strong-link dependent, was like basketball, where a team’s best player could single-handedly shape matches. Bowling, which was weak-link dependent, was more like football, where weak players could leave entire teams and systems exposed, as Chris Anderson and David Sally showed in The Numbers Game.

  Stronger bowling teams were also ‘more versatile’ than those who were stronger in batting, according to Srinath Bhashyam, head of operations of Delhi Capitals. With a better bowling attack, sides were less encumbered by the result of the toss.

  Historically in longer forms of cricket, teams generally preferred to bat first, partly because they could enjoy the best of conditions before the pitch deteriorated and partly because they could avoid the pressure of batting in a run chase. The former Australian captain Ian Chappell once famously said, ‘When you win the toss, you bat first nine times out of ten; the tenth time you think about it and bat first anyway.’ In the early years of T20 this convention held true with 56% of teams between 2003 and the end of 2012 electing to bat first upon winning the toss.

  But as T20 evolved it became increasingly apparent that conditions did not change sufficiently to make batting first preferable. Instead, the onset of dew in the second innings – especially for matches played at night – actually made it harder for bowlers to grip the ball and typically helped the pitch skid on and prove easier for batting, dissuading teams from electing to defend totals. As the scope and range of modern batsmen became clear the pressure of chasing targets was alleviated; increasingly, the clarity of thought provided by a target to chase emboldened batsmen. On the flipside this evolution has made setting an appropriate target trickier.

  ‘The level of skills batsmen have shown, the improvement dealing with levels of risk and finding boundaries means batting units or teams in general are quite comfortable knowing what their target is. The unease of posting a score, or knowing what a good score is, is becoming more and more difficult,’ said Morgan. ‘Probably over the last three years, having a look at previous results or scores at the ground hasn’t been as reliable as in the past. That’s made it difficult.’

  In addition to the structural benefits to chasing, teams generally preferred to play to their stronger suit in the second half of the match when the parameters of the contest were set. So batting-dominant teams preferred to chase and bowling-dominant teams preferred to defend. Yet the enormity of the challenge facing bowlers in T20 meant there was a relative scarcity of high-quality bowlers in the format. Most teams simply trusted their batsmen more than their bowlers, and were more comfortable chasing.

  By 2013 the anarchy of the early years gave way to clarity. Between 2013 and 2018 60% of toss-winning teams elected to chase – responding both to the structure of the format and the relative strengths of their own team which were almost invariably in favour of the batsmen.

  Percentage of Toss Winners Electing to Chase

  2003–12

  2013–18

  44%

  60%

  This imbalance in toss choices provided the best bowling teams with an
advantage because the large majority of their opponents wanted to chase. ‘If you’re a batting team, you’re going to want to chase, but if you’re a bowling team then the other team will want to chase anyway, so you can actually almost do what you like every game,’ explained Moody. ‘I think teams that are strong defensively with the ball won’t have an issue with defending because they’ve got bowlers like Sunil Narine, Rashid Khan or Imran Tahir that thrive under scoreboard pressure.’

  Batting second also made it easier to plan your bowling innings. Occasionally strategies could be waylaid by a particularly marauding batsman but generally the absence of a target to defend allowed captains to stick to bowling patterns they’d formulated in advance of the match. When a team was bowling second their plans were forced to adapt depending on the circumstances of the match: there would be no sense leaving the final over of the innings to the best bowler if the match was already on its way to being lost. When bowling second, bowlers were more likely to be forced to bowl at a time that did not ideally suit them.

  Despite the worth of leading bowlers – and the scarcity of their gifts – bowlers were generally not rewarded as handsomely as batsmen in auctions and drafts. In the 2019 IPL auction bowlers commanded the lowest average salary of all player roles.

  Average Salary by Player Role, IPL 2019

  Player Role

  Average Salary

  Wicketkeepers

  $577,476

  Batsmen

  $557,302

  All-Rounders

  $412,070

  Bowlers

  $362,701

  This discrepancy was the likely product of the prevailing image of T20, which was defined by power-hitting batsmen, not frugal bowlers. It was also a consequence of perspective: a batsman scoring a fifty off 20 balls was far more dramatic than a bowler taking 4 for 20 from his four overs, despite the latter typically being of more value.

  Statistical analysis suggested that teams who restricted their opponents to, say, 15 runs under the par score for a ground tended to win more matches than those who scored the same amount over the par score. Paradoxically, saving runs in the field appeared to be more important to teams than scoring runs. This discrepancy could partly be explained by teams seldom losing all ten wickets in an innings. So a team whose batting was relatively weak would still be unlikely to be bowled out, giving them a chance of getting to a good total in spite of losing early wickets, but a team whose bowling was weak would invariably have to chase a large total.

  Whether or not bowlers were more important than batsmen, there was broad agreement among analysts that bowlers were, at the very least, undervalued on the T20 market. ‘What I think is likely,’ observed Joe Harris, a freelance T20 analyst, ‘is that the number one ranked bowling attacks cost less to construct than the number one ranked batting line-ups.’ Investing in elite bowling was the most proven way to build a formidable T20 team on the cheap.

  FIVE

  SPIN KINGS

  ‘Opening batsmen typically were not accustomed to facing spin bowlers as much as pace . . . So immediately getting a spinner on up front was a novelty’

  Samuel Badree, two-time T20 World Cup winner for the West Indies

  A hop, a skip and a jump and Sunil Narine is into his bowling action. The unassuming nature of his approach to the crease belies the wizardry of what is to come. It happens very suddenly. Just as he plants his back leg for delivery, what started as a lackadaisical motion is transformed into a concentration of energy. Power is transferred up through his legs, into his hips and lower back and then like a bolt of electricity it zips through his shoulder, into his arm and finally the ball itself.

  Narine’s delivery motion, a blur of rotating shoulders, powerful hands and dexterous fingers, imparts an extraordinary number of revolutions on the ball. The scrambled seam gyrates rapidly. The ball is fizzing down the pitch on Narine’s notoriously flat and fast trajectory.

  Then, for a fraction of a second everything seems to stop as the ball hits the pitch and grips in the turf. This is the moment of truth for the waiting batsman – the left-hander Nicholas Pooran – who will soon know if he’s read the direction of the spin correctly. As a fellow Trinidadian Pooran had faced Narine many times before in the nets and in advance of the match he had studied videos and watched the slow-motion replays in an effort to decipher Narine’s different deliveries. But here he was batting in a Super Over in the Caribbean Premier League, playing for Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel with Narine representing the Guyana Amazon Warriors, and nothing could prepare him for the real thing. The ball is on a leg stump line and Pooran clears his leg, giving him room to free his arms.

  The ball grips in the pitch for what seems like an age before it spits off the turf and spins an almost freakish amount. It is an off break; the delivery that Pooran expected – turning away from him – but he seems stunned by the degree of spin and swings wildly at the ball with almost no expectation of making contact. The wicketkeeper too is shocked and barely gets his hands down in time. One ball into the Super Over, no runs scored.

  A Super Over is cricket’s equivalent of a penalty shootout in football – used when teams are level on runs after 20 overs. Just as T20 made batsmen more aggressive than in ODIs, a Super Over – with six balls available to three batsmen – had the same effect. The average score in a Super Over was ten; in this particular instance Trinidad and Tobago are chasing 12 to win.

  The second ball is on an almost identical line to the first but it is even faster at 62 mph, giving Pooran – who plays the same shot – even less time to respond. The spin is sharp again and this time the bounce is low, scuttling through at shin height. Pooran swings and misses for a second time.

  The date is August 2014 and this is Narine at the peak of his powers. The match is being played at the Providence Stadium in Guyana, a venue notorious for its slow, low and dry pitches which make run scoring exceptionally difficult and benefit spinners enormously. No T20 venue in the world has a lower scoring rate – the average score is a meagre 129. Batting in T20 doesn’t get tougher than this.

  The third ball is a repeat of the second: flat, fast and skidding through. Pooran wildly swings and misses for the third time. The target is now slipping out of reach. Pooran has not yet laid bat on a single delivery in the over.

  The stands are a long way from the action at Providence Stadium – the boundaries are enormous – but the vuvuzelas, a trademark of Guyana’s loyal fans, erupt in the background. They may be a way away but they are well aware that the world’s master spin bowler is casting a spell over Pooran.

  The horns hum in the background as Narine gathers for a fourth time. This time he changes the angle by coming tighter on the crease and bowling slightly wider. It is the fastest ball of the over at 64 mph: as fast as some medium-pacers. Narine is still spinning it to an enormous degree and again the ball fizzes off the pitch, getting some extra bounce this time and skipping over the top edge of the bat and into the keeper’s gloves. Pooran, who has not even hit a single ball this over, now needs to hit the last two balls of the over for six to win the match.

  On the fifth ball Pooran finally makes contact with another ripping off break. He doesn’t hit it cleanly though, toe-edging a drive shot high in the air. The long-off fielder steadies himself beneath the ball and takes a comfortable catch well inside the boundary rope. Narine – who until now has remained totally calm – breaks into celebration, punching the air and screaming. With 12 runs needed from one ball the match is won.

  The last ball of the Super Over still has to be bowled. The batsman on strike is now the right-handed New Zealander Ross Taylor. The first five balls were all off breaks – spinning away from the left-handed Pooran. For the sixth ball Narine finally unfurls his variation: the carrom ball, which pitches and spins wickedly away from the right-hander, taking it out of the hitting arc once more – a wink from the abyss. Taylor has a wild swing and misses the ball by a foot.

  Six balls, five swings and misses, no
runs and one wicket. This was perhaps the most remarkable individual display of bowling in the short history of T20. The king – Sunil Narine, in his castle – the Providence Stadium. A wicket maiden in a Super Over.

  ***

  T20 was meant to signal the death of spin bowling. ‘We thought they’d be hopeless,’ recalled Adam Hollioake, who captained Surrey to the inaugural Twenty20 Cup trophy in 2003. ‘When T20 first started everyone thought the spinners would just get smashed,’ remembered Shane Warne, cricket’s most famous spinner who took over 1,000 international wickets and won the IPL with Rajasthan Royals. ‘People thought as soon as the spin comes on, yeah we can whack it.’

  The theory was that spinners – who traditionally bowled slowly and tossed the ball up above the batsman’s eyeline – would be brutalised by attacking batsmen wielding big bats and looking to club the ball over small boundaries. In contrast, pace bowling was touted as the best option to stem the flow of runs. ‘It was a classic fear response – if you’re scared, hit somebody harder, be more aggressive, bowl faster,’ explained the spin bowler Jeremy Snape.

  Yet in T20’s first age, no type of player has excelled as consistently and as comprehensively as spin bowlers.

  The notion that spinners would struggle in T20 was quickly dispelled. In the early years of England’s Twenty20 Cup, Surrey’s Nayan Doshi, Sussex’s Mushtaq Ahmed, Leicestershire’s Snape, Nottinghamshire’s Graeme Swann and Glamorgan’s Robert Croft were all among the most successful bowlers. Meanwhile in Pakistan – the third country to establish a T20 league after England and South Africa – spinners were even more effective, making up five of the top six wicket-takers across the first two seasons. Apart from Mushtaq, a leg-spinner and therefore capable of spinning the ball both ways, there was no real magic or X factor to the bowlers who had success in England. Rather, they simply took pace off the ball, were accurate and used their experience to outfox the batsmen.