They always say the chase is the best bit to life but that has been taken to extremes in this year’s Indian Premier League where only four times, out of 32 matches, have teams batted first after winning the toss.
The perception of the majority, that there is a clear advantage for batsmen to know their target, has been borne out by the results, too, with 23 matches of the 32 won by the side batting second. At 70 per cent it is, as they say, a significant statistic.
Most have become used to T20 cricket mutating as rapidly as an influenza virus. Since its inception at the top level in 2002, any number of fads, affectations and cute shots have come, and in some cases, gone, in pursuit of pummelling the white ball. But chasing now seems to confer such an advantage that it threatens the very balance of the match, which is what good cricket should be about.
When I played for Essex in the last millennium, we used to prefer to bat first in one-day cricket. We had a good, disciplined bowling attack and a decent fielding side so, providing we set our opponents anything above four runs an over, we fancied our chances.
On the contrary, our batsmen, Graham Gooch apart, tended to be more nervous chasing, so if it was within our power to avoid it, and providing the pitch wasn’t so green as to make bowling first sensible, we did.
Conditions don’t change too much in T20 (the entire match lasts a maximum 40 overs), especially in the IPL. Apart from the occasional dew in Mumbai and Mohali, pitches do not deteriorate, so rarely is there any advantage afforded by the conditions. But if that is the case, why are so many matches won by teams batting second?
It is a law of human nature that risks are generally easier to take when you know the outcome. For that reason, chasing has long been a preference for some, even before the near ‘monopoly’ of sides doing it in the current IPL.
Stephen Fleming, New Zealand’s eminent former captain, reckoned bowling first gave a team two chances in a one-day game in that even if you messed up and conceded an above par total, the batsmen could still fire and win the match. But if you made a mess of batting first defeat was pretty much a foregone conclusion, unless there was something spiteful in the pitch.
There are other reasons why chasing has become such a no-brainer for most teams and it could simply be down to batsmen (and their bats) having become better and more advanced than bowlers.
Take a typical practice session. According to one leading coach, batsmen will have a net then go and practise their range-hitting skills. They can, if they desire, hit 100 balls. A bowler just does not have the time or the puff to practise bowling 100 yorkers, not in a single net session. The huge difference in the volume of practice open to the two groups means batsmen are bound to improve at a faster rate than bowlers.
Such practice has also enabled most batsmen within a team to be able to clear the boundary. Again, when I played you could count the number of batsmen likely to smack you for six on three fingers. Now, when you look at most T20 teams you’ll be lucky to find that many in a side who can’t whack you out of the park.
That capability, of most batsmen being able to strike sixes, means teams feel they are never out of a chase, as anyone in the top nine can alter the game in the space of a few overs. So whereas once a run chase that rose to 12-14 runs an over used to give sides a reason to run up the white flag, these days it is eminently gettable, or at least that is the belief. As a result, collective confidence, a potent force, is now higher among chasing teams than it used to be.
More time and number crunching is probably required to confirm whether this trend is absolute, but if batting second does confer a significant advantage what can be done to reduce it?
As ever, the imbalance between bat and ball in white ball cricket is where I’d start. At present, bowlers are asked, as in baseball, to present the ball into a hitting zone for the batsman. Restrictions on width, height and frequency of short balls, not to mention the small boundaries and supersonic bats, all mitigate against bowlers. To balance that we need something to handicap batsmen.
To do that I would allow four bouncers an over (providing they are not above head high) and I would give the bowler the leg-side wide line mark as well as the off-side one. The first would stop batsmen setting themselves to hit against all but the most medium pace, while the second would keep them guessing that fraction longer so as not to be able to take their current liberties for granted.
Batsmen can move around the crease (something they cannot do in baseball) with impunity. Well, let them reach a bit more for their shots.
After all, if you fire in down the leg-side in red ball cricket it is a dot not a wide.
Another measure to be considered is the lbw law, but this change would only be for white ball cricket or maybe just T20.
Forget whether the ball pitched outside leg. If it is going to strike the stumps, it is out. All bowlers would gain with spinners, a put-upon lot generally now that most batsmen can reverse sweep and mess up their field placings, perhaps benefiting most.
Incorporate these changes into T20 and I’m pretty sure chasing down scores would not become so routine. Cricket needs to be upheld by a balance of probabilities, not the racing certainties currently thrown up in this year’s IPL.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday May 6 2016
