My son and myself were chatting just before the ODI season started about how Twenty20 might make the one-day game obsolete. We agreed that there was a tameness and lack of sparkle about the ODI games.
This is especially so when teams went about slowly but surely accumulating runs rather than going out and chasing them as you have to do in Twenty20 cricket.
But after the first two Twenty20 internationals and the first two ODIs between Australia and South Africa, I’ve had a quick change of mind.
The ODIs have been much more interesting matches than in the past few years, and more intriguing and riveting than the Twenty20 matches when Dave Warner isn’t batting.
And the reason for this is the innovation of the batting power play. This innovation allows the batting side, after the first 10 overs when the field placings are automatically restricted to two outside the circle to call for a batting power play. During this 5-over spell the fielding side can only place three men outside the circle.
In theory, at least, the batting power play helps hitters to smash the ball to the boundary. There has been an interesting use of the batting power play by South Africa in the first two ODIs which seems to suggest that just when it is taken can have a decisive influence on the outcome of a match.
At Hobart in the second ODI Australia took its batting power play mid-way through its innings. With the field up because only three players were allowed outside the ropes, Ricky Ponting was immediately caught in the gully – where the over before there was no fieldsman.
Not long after this, the other high scorer in the Australian side, Shaun Marsh, was caught at mid-on, again by a fieldsman who was on the boundary in the overs before when there wasn’t a power play.
This raised the question in my mind that what would happen if a batting side didn’t call for its power play? Is this allowed? The fact is that it is sometimes easier for stroke-makers like Ponting who don’t generally hit in the air to score runs when there are plenty of gaps in the in-field.
The South Africans, on the other hand, have worked out a tactic of taking their batting batting power play after the 44th over. This tactic means that the fielding side must try to withstand a batting onslaught right at the end of the match, with only the last over allowing the fielding the respite of having five men out in the deep.
In Melbourne, South Africa took its power play with 61 runs needed and 36 balls to be bowled: in Hobart, the power play was taken with 60 runs needed off 36 balls.
The tactic worked for South Africa in Melbourne. It did not work at Hobart where 18 runs were needed off the last over.
To my mind, the tactic of taking the batting power play almost at the death was correct. What was wrong was a strategic mistake by South Africa in thinking that the smaller Hobart oval would be just as good at chasing runs ground as the vast MCG.
The Hobart oval seemed to be to be a ‘slow’ ground as far as the outfield was concerned. The batsmen on both sides had difficulty hitting fours. And unlike on the MCG, the batsmen ran far fewer twos (tews as Richie Benaud might say) than at Melbourne. I don’t think the South African brains trust thought about this as they allowed their batsmen to plod their way to the final, frenetic overs.
Another consideration came into play, as well, when the batting power play was taken very late in the innings. Michael Slater rather perceptively pointed out that if you take the batting power play earlier the fielding captain is obliged to bowl his best bowlers then, for a few overs, to contain the batsmen.
This means that these bowlers don’t have many overs left at the end when a charge is invariably mounted, whether there is a batting power play in operation or not.
At Hobart, for instance, Ricky Ponting was able to hold back his best bowler Nathan Bracken so that he bowled 5 of the last 10 overs. While the South Africans got to Ben Hilfenhaus a bit, they couldn’t do much to Bracken and the charge had the same sort of futility about as the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.
It will be fascinating now to see for the rest of the series what the South African response is to the tactic of holding Bracken back and whether this will affect their tactic of taking their batting power play late.
This brings me to a sort of summary of the three major forms of the cricket game in terms of a literary analogy.
The Twenty20 game is an advertising slogan (written by Mojo or John Singleton).
The one-day game is a short story, often with a sort of Stephen King or O.Henry twist to it at the end.
The Test format is cricket’s novel, with dramatic set pieces (the opening over and so on), sprawling, driven by characters, seemingly timeless, often inconclusive but just as often nail-biting in the intensity of its concluding phases.
There is a time and place for all the formats, as long as they are not over-played, which might be happening with Twenty20 cricket in India.
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