The rules have changed: T20 batting revolution is here, and India is leading the charge

It appears that our diagnosis could not have been further off the mark. It was not flat pitches, unidimensional overhead conditions, or short boundaries that reduced bowlers to mere spectators in T20 cricket.

Nor was it a subcontinental problem brought on by a summer IPL feast that lasted months. None of this helps the cause of the bowlers. Slow bowlers are crippled by dimensions of the playing field and the ball coming onto the bat nicely.

Fast bowlers struggle to ask questions when there is neither swing nor seam movement to exploit, nor pace and bounce to intimidate batsmen. In the subcontinent, white-ball pitches are watered and rolled till the cows come home, making the surfaces so true that batsmen can line up a bowler and go through with a shot against good deliveries, not just loose ones.


These factors certainly help batsmen, but they do not explain the scale of the shift in the balance.

The T20Is in New Zealand are showing us what has actually changed. Batsmen have finally embraced the fact that T20 cricket is a game of managing resources. There are 120 balls on offer, and the batting side must optimise how to make as many runs as possible in these mini events that make up an innings.

With 10 wickets at their disposal, teams have realised that the batting resources on hand negate any real risk of being bowled out. A team with six specialist top-flight batsmen and then allrounders till No. 8 or No. 9 shouldn’t worry about being bowled out. Except they did.

Batsmen were brought up on the edict of putting a price on their wicket. The first rule was to protect your wicket — as the adage goes, you can’t score too many runs sitting in the dressing room once you are dismissed. But today’s T20 batsmen are not looking at the 20 overs but rather at the few balls in front ofthem. They would rather die trying and let the next guy have a crack than occupy the crease without scoring at a brisk clip.

The fundamental structure of cricket was that the bowler asked the question by delivering the ball and the batsman responded. The bowler set the terms of engagement: a short, wide delivery, with the square boundary protected, forced batsmen to either shoulder arms or try to pierce the gap, mindful of the fielder in place.

Today, the same ball may be ramped over third man, cut in front of point for six or flat-batted like a tennis down-theline shot over the straight fielder. In short, batsmen have woken up to the fact that don’t need to work within the constraints of the type of bowler, the line and length and the field set. Rather, they have spent countless hours in the nets perfecting the art of hitting any of these deliveries, even off balance, over the ropes. Play still begins with the bowler at the top of his mark and the ball in his hand. But the pressure is now on him.

The likes of Abhishek Sharma, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson and others are not passively waiting for what may be served up to respond with a stroke. They begin by visualising how they might hit any ball for six.

If the bowler somehow makes that awkward, there’s always a four to be managed. This is the mindset. And while these may be the primary beasts in the batting line-up, their approach is bolstered by packing the lower order with allrounders so the top never has to think about conserving wickets or consolidating. The eighth batsman in the line-up is not there in case the top seven fail.

Rather, his presence allows those before him to not even have to think about the consequences of failure. This high-risk approach will lead to some spectacular implosions, but with a team such as India’s, the sheer batting talent around means the odds are stacked in their favour over a decent sample size of matches. There have been exhortations, even agonised calls, to redress the imbalance between bat and ball.

But changing pitches, conditions, and boundary sizes will not stop this revolution. Such changes may allow us to recognise T20 cricket as a version of the game we have all come to love. We may long for that familiarity and comfort. But that is not the future of T20 cricket. India are leading the way in terms of how T20 batting will be approached. Their players are the best drilled in it.

But it won’t be long before other teams recognise the shift and find ways to compete. Fasten your seatbelts: the rain of fours and sixes has only just begun. Avert your eyes if you feel ‘this is just not cricket.’ You may be right, but the game you are longing for is never coming back.