The Analyst discusses what lessons we learned from the World T20 - namely how to bat outside the box and the importance of luck
So once again the hosts of the World T20 didn’t win the tournament. As with the previous four competitions, the home team faded at the last.
India, overwhelming favourites as well as hosts, didn’t even make it to the final, in spite of their wealth of experience in their own Indian Premier League. Why?
Two reasons.
First, the brief, frenetic nature of T20 is that one exceptional over or one amazing hitting spree can change everything, and the most unexpected player can produce that as we saw in the final.
Carlos Brathwaite’s astonishing last-over assault stole West Indies victory from the jaws of defeat. That feat was beyond anyone’s control, even the batsman himself.
If Ben Stokes bowled that exact same over again, there is a very high probability that Braithwaite would not strike every ball so cleanly or so far.
It was a performance up there with Torville and Dean’s perfect sixes for their bolero in the 1984 Winter Olympics.
So luck plays a significant part in winning T20 matches.
But second, India did not deserve to win either because they weren’t imaginative enough.
It may seem harsh on a group of players who have raised the bar for consistently chasing, and posting, demanding targets in short formats, but in fact they are still a pretty orthodox team.
Virat Kohli – the man of the tournament – is excluded from this. He averaged 136 in the competition with a strike rate of 146 and kept India in it in the crucial defeats of Pakistan and Australia.
But what of his colleagues? Well, very little was seen of them, to be honest. They left it all up to Kohli.
Significantly they didn’t try anything. Indian T20 cricket is still all rather conventional.
There is little moving up and down or across the crease, and, despite their wristiness, no really creative shots at all.
The first ‘ramp’ from an Indian that I saw was played by MS Dhoni in the semi final, and it went for four to an unprotected fine leg.
Do you ever see a scoop or a reverse sweep from any of them? Very rarely.
These are not just shots for show. They are played to deliberately manipulate the field and mess up the bowler’s plans.
We saw their effect in the final. Brathwaite ‘ramped’ David Willey’s final ball of the 18th over for four.
It was not only a crucial boundary but it placed doubt in the bowlers’ minds that they could just bowl full with deep fielders set straight and no one at fine leg.
It compromised their plans, although in that final over the only place fielders would have been any use was in the stands.
T20 cricket is a 360 degree ‘horizontal’ game.
In other words many of the shots are played with the bat going across the line of the ball, by both hitting off side and leg side rather than down it.
Most countries – notably England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Sri Lanka – have embraced this.
India are still playing a predominantly ‘vertical’ T20 batting game.
They need a rethink or they’ll get left behind. Mind you, they’ve got time. The next World T20 isn’t until 2020.
READ: Simon Hughes: The intensity and relentlessness of modern cricket is a problem
