Its Only Cricket

Twenty20 cricket trickier than you think

Filed under Exclusives

T20CricketComingFast.jpgOne of the myths about twenty20 cricket is, that it's killing the bowlers.. I'll try to prove it's not.

Another myth about twenty20 cricket is, that spinner won't have too many roles to play in this format of International cricket. I'll contradict that as well but before all this - lets revise how first twenty20 world cup fixtures in south africa has been scheduled.

At least 9 of that 27 match tournament will be played as night matches ~ means swinging african evening conditions. Durban & Cape town always have had a devil in the wind, favoring bowlers who are ready to bend their back. I wonder if ICC uses different cricket balls for Twenty20 format than they do for one day Internationals - cause if they don't - an established bowler in universal cricket arena must make life horrible for batters till the ball is new, hard & shinning. first 10 overs at least..

People wrongly believe that twenty20 cricket is all about smashing sixes & collecting occasional boundaries. Top 20/20 County teams in England have proved that even a score of around 150 is defend-able, if bowling is clever. This new format of cricket is also about negotiating with good balls bowled by in-form bowlers, n also to consolidate (make platform) for lower order batter to swing freely. It still takes only 10 wicket taking deliveries to bowl out an opposition - thus a 120 balls innings is 110 more than what true good bowlers actually need.

I agree that Spinners, I mean the specialist spinners (who only bowl, not bat) may be out of this game, given that they aren't Muthiah Muralitharan or in that league. But slow bowlers are not going too far from this format. As a captain - you can adjust 3 wicket taking bowlers/seamers = 12 overs, whereas remaining 8 can be bowled 2-3 a piece by batting all-rounders like Michael Clarke or Sachin Tendulkar or Paul Collingwood. In 50 over one day Internationals, fielding captain had to find 10 or 20 overs from lesser bowlers (who usually bowled 3 good overs before going for runs after that) but in Twenty20 cricket - 3 batsman who can role-the-arm-over can do the job fine.

No batsman (I dare include Bradmans n Pontings n Dravids) can come out from hutch to start blasting from ball 1 they face. All batters need time (around 8-10 deliveries), other wise they miss-hit. Only fools like Shahid Afridi hit the first to lose hiw wicket, whereas blessed ones like Mohammad Yousuf give themselves to get settled & feel ball on bat. Pumped-up bowler will have HIS SAY at those situations in a twenty20 cricket game.

I must add that my eye/mind is not more than 20 odd twenty20 matches old - so above analysis is just a calculated prediction. I compiled the little I know about twenty20 because of special demand from harrowdrive.com. I'm sure I'll better explain the tricks n tips for this 3rd version of cricket after following the upcoming twenty-20 worldcup in south afrika.




Related Articles
Top Topics Today

Itsonlycricket.com


Get new posts in email

feeds
Random Pics

fun