India–behind the curve in T20s

In a see-sawing match, a floundering and error-prone India overcame a plucky Bangladesh to win the match and the series. For a while, when Indian were under the pump, it looked like Bangladesh would take the game away but one over turned the match on its head and India was a relieved team to walk away with the series in tow; just a few days earlier, India had lost its first ever T20 match to the eastern neighbours. Yes, the Indian team was shorn of some of its biggest stars for this series, but Bangladesh was missing some of its stars as well. While this defeat didn’t quite feel like the sucker punch that led India to prematurely exit the World Cup in 2007, it had been a long while coming.

About three years ago, Mushfiqur Rahim had almost dragged his team across the line in a pulsating encounter at the 2016 World T20; but somehow, that Bangladesh team had found a way to lose the match at the death, losing three wickets in the last three balls. Such a hiccup wouldn’t happen this time around—Bangladesh didn’t lose the opportunity to beat its more fancied opponent. But these results were more a reflection of how much India has been behind the curve in the sport’s shortest format for a while now.

India’s excellent test team and its depth has been a topic of discussion recently, and rightly so. Additionally its ODI team is possibly the best-ever in its cricketing history. But the story is quite different in the T20 format.  India started the series in the fifth place—a fair reflection of where it stands in this format. It is hard to believe that a team which took to the format like a duck to the water in the inaugural World T20, and has, arguably, the world’s best T20 domestic league is an also-ran in this format.

Over the last few years, the Indian team management has been treating T20s as a proving ground for fresh talent seeking a place in the Indian team. Back in 2017, Ravi Shastri said:

“T20 cricket for us, we don’t care. You win or lose, it doesn’t matter, but give youngsters the opportunity so you come to know who is in the fray for 2019.”

Many, many matches later, India still doesn’t know the identity of the middle order or that of the keeper. What is worse, by conflating the two formats, it is doing a disservice to both. This has been happening with such regularity that it isn’t even funny anymore.

Though cricket fans may view T20 as a compressed version of the ODI, it is fundamentally a different sport. You may argue that it is still 11-on-11, played in the same stadium, with same rules and so on, but the grammar of the sport makes it very different from the two longer formats. The balls per dismissal hovers ~65 in tests and ~38 in ODIs. But in T20Is, this number dips drastically to ~17 but you still have ten wickets! Meaning, on average, a batsman in T20Is faces about three overs, and he has to maximize returns in this short stint at the wicket, which turns traditional cricket thinking on its head. So go-to phrases from the commentator/TV pundit manual such as “playing yourself in”, “set batsman” and “why didn’t he just take a single after scoring a big shot instead of going for another” don’t apply in this format, more so in the first innings when you are looking to maximize the score. Therefore, T20 batting is the antithesis of batting wisdom in the longer formats.

And this is where India has always missed a trick—by not focussing on strike rate or run rate. Primarily, what has been holding India back has been a conservative approach to batting—an extension of the affliction affecting the ODI team as well. Over the last five years, against top teams, India has been the best side while chasing, but has an average record while setting the target—suggesting that India struggles to read the conditions right and set an appropriate target more often than not.

At the top of the order are Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, and Virat Kohli, the most-feared top order in ODI cricket today; but they don’t lead the pack in T20Is in terms of strike rate (only Rohit makes the top 10). One look at the IPL stats, it is the same story there as well. Virat Kohli has made an unearthly 60 runs per dismissal in T20Is over the last 5 years. But guess what? At his strike rate of 139, when <7 wickets is enough to last the entire 20 overs in the average T20I, two Evin Lewises will overcome his output on a consistent basis. To be fair, Rohit Sharma has upped his game over the last few years (like he did so in the second match), but there is perhaps only one spot (at most) for a “classical batsman” who can motor along as other players “explode” around this fulcrum. But what has affected the team over the last few years is that it is filled with several “me-too” batsmen who play with this attitude. Instead, Indian batsmen should learn to value their wickets far lesser in the T20 format and learn to “go for it” from ball 1.

The problem with the batting is only emblematic of the larger problem affecting the Indian team—it is too slow to adapt to the evolution of the format around the cricketing world and picking up best practices. It was too late to the wrist spin party; it took a really long time to give chances to spin-bowling all-rounders such as Krunal Pandya who have much better batting chops than Axar Patel (this is in spite of having seen good performances in the IPL); it isn’t thinking of experimenting by sending a pinch-hitter at the top of the order (in the mould of Sunil Narine or Moeen Ali) to maximize returns; heck, BCCI doesn’t even allow players to participate in overseas leagues even when there are no domestic or India commitments. No wonder India’s understanding of the game is quite limited.

With the 2020 World T20 looming large, and with the team falling short in previous editions, India should pull its socks up in the upcoming 20-odd matches in the format if it has to take a serious step towards correcting the anomaly.

 

Why has the IPL been such a big hit?

Since 2008, most of top stars in the cricketing world have been taking a collective break from international and domestic cricket to take part in the Indian Premier League (IPL) that happens mostly in a ~2 month window between March and May. In short, during this time period the IPL has been the cynosure of the cricketing world at large. Looking back, even though it may seem inevitable that viewership in cricket would crave a shorter format, it wasn’t really obvious at the time. In fact, it seems rather incredulous today that BCCI and India were quite indifferent to T20’s charms initially (more on this shortly). But what contributes to the enduring appeal of the IPL? What are the various factors that have made the league what it is today—the biggest commercial property outside international cricket (and quite possibly will surpass it soon)? The answers lie in two major factors—timing and scheduling. Though both terms may look like synonyms, the reader can be rest assured that they aren’t in this instance.

The first reason for the popularity of the IPL and T20 format, as it has been with many commercial products, has been the factor of timing. Around the turn of the millennium, the last bastion of healthy turnout for the first-class game—England—had started witnessing lower turnouts. Especially, the younger generation were preferring to adopt other sports in favour of cricket. The marketing manager of the ECB, Stuart Robertson, suggested looking a compressed format which was more in tune with current temporal demands. A year later, despite facing some opposition from the county chairmen, on the back of some last over slogging, the format found a midwife.

International cricket didn’t take the format seriously—the first T20 international featured mirthful scenes, also featuring mock red card to Glenn McGrath for impersonating the infamous underarm incident. In a couple of years, most nations played their first T20 game, drawing a mix of curiosity and bewilderment from their supporters. India was one of the last “big” nations to play its inaugural game; its domestic version, was a damp squib. “T20? Why not ten-ten or five-five or one-one?” thundered Niranjan Shah in the 2006 ICC board meeting, before boldly proclaiming that India would never play the format. The rival ICL, which had gained some momentum, was swiftly put out of business by BCCI.

At the same time, the ODI format had plateaued. Australia had sleepwalked to their third successive World Cup and was the standout team in a format with few surprises; ICC’s various attempts to enliven the game (supersub, superseries, experimenting with field restrictions and so on) had failed to hit the mark. India, quite disastrously, got knocked out in the group stage, making the tournament less palatable to the various stakeholders. The farcical 2007 World Cup final served as a fine (if it can be called that) example of everything that had gone wrong with the over-milked cash cow that was the ODI format.

It was in this setting that the T20 format captured the public imagination. Why, it seems really hard to believe that India were not too keen on fielding a team for the inaugural World T20 and had to be subtly arm-twisted into doing so by Ehsan Mani. India grudgingly sent a squad which reeked of the distaste that BCCI had for the new-fangled format—the team, captained by a greenhorn M S Dhoni, did not feature the batting superstars. More importantly, the short, crisp tournament was everything the ODI World Cup wasn’t—Australia were beatable (even by Zimbabwe), many matches were close, and an Indian victory ensured eyeballs and some instant love. By the time India had won the tense, cagey final, to paraphrase and misquote Victor Hugo, no BCCI could stop the idea of T20 whose time had come. The IPL had been launched in low-key fashion a few days before the victory, and BCCI now had the opportunity of being at the right place at the right time. 11 years after the first edition, it is safe to say that cricket hasn’t been the same ever since.

The other factor which has undoubtedly worked for the IPL is scheduling. One look at the future tours program shows that there is a pattern to international (and domestic) cricket. Essentially, cricket takes place during a 6-month window in various nations across the world. Cricket in England is a summer-time sport with the highlight of the cricket season headlined around the peak of summer; it is also the case in the other countries in the temperate zones which are not affected by a torrential rainy season (April-September in England and October-March in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand). On the other hand, even though the Asian countries are situated in the Northern hemisphere, playing cricket is not possible during the traditional English summer season due to the monsoon. Hence, in the subcontinent, cricket is a winter-time sport (October-March), which runs in tandem along with the cricketing schedules of the Southern hemisphere cricketing nations. The tropical West Indies grapple with a different problem despite having no monsoon and having great sunshine through the year—the hurricane season during the second half of the calendar year. This international cricket schedule percolates down to the domestic seasons as well. Looking at the pre-existing pattern, the scheduling window for the now-defunct Champions League T20 seems obvious.

This is exactly why the IPL during April and May is a scheduling masterstroke (not to mention its alignment with the school summer vacations); it is during the second half of the day in the hottest, driest part of the year and it does not conflict with the traditional cricketing seasons of most countries (barring England and WI). In fact, this tournament opened up a 2-month window in India, when domestic cricket traditionally wouldn’t take place hitherto as the longer formats were probably too harsh on the players in the oppressive summer.

Since the tournament does not clash with existing domestic structures of most cricketing nations, the presence of top stars has been all but ensured. The West Indies players are some of the most sought after T20 stars, and the conflicts between the players and the board have undoubtedly helped the IPL’s cause. This also explains the love-hate relationship between the English cricketing establishment and the IPL—the English players have either usually had to pick IPL over their domestic commitments or have been passed over entirely. No doubt the IPL has the first-mover advantage, but crucially, it has been aided by other favourable circumstances too—no domestic cricket runs in parallel with this tournament (as it has been the case in other countries such as Australia, England and others), and no overlap with other T20 leagues as well.

Therefore, the IPL’s success stems from these factors creating the perfect storm and it has hence become a league like no other in world cricket.