During a recent writing break, I got an interesting email from a convertible-driving mate of mine from Brisbane. Aside from rubbing my nose in the fact that I’m in a viewing market yet to see the Everest of free-to-air television sport that is ONE HD (he tells me it’s “excellent”), he raised a very interesting question about Twenty20 cricket.
He wrote:
“Has anyone else noticed that T20 cricket is kind of dull? There are big hits, sure, but how often is there a really close competition? When Australia have played their little 1 or 2 matches mixed in with bigger tours, I can’t remember any of the games being close. The only game I can remember being actually exciting in terms of a result was the world cup final between India and Pakistan. Just about every other game I can remember one of the team falls apart with the bat and there’s little doubt about who’s going to win.
“I need a dedicated sport columnist to check the figures – are there a lot of close games and I just miss them?”
Now initially, I got a little caught up on the “dedicated sports columnist” tag and started dreaming up all the statistics I could to support this theory, but then it occurred to that perhaps this is all about perceptions.
If my mate up in Brisbane, with his roofless driving and nice weather, is thinking this about Twenty20, is it indicative of the wider audience? And could that mean that there’s more to my recent thoughts on the future of T20 Internationals than I wrote at the time?
Australia’s performance in the tour-ending T20 against Pakistan the other night, where they were soundly beaten by seven wickets with a couple of overs to go, certainly did nothing to quell this perception.
Stand-in captain Brad Haddin’s comment that “It looked like we didn’t bring our game at all and we had half a foot on the plane” was a strong candidate for any Stating the Bleeding Obvious awards that may be handed out in 2009. And the loss also quickly silenced critics – most notably Geoff Lawson – who bagged Michael Clarke for missing a game he described as “the ideal preparation for an international 20 over tournament”.
Or not, as it turned out.
So with the Twenty20 World Cup due to start in England in a few weeks, are these perceptions of dullness a reality for the international game? And do those perceptions carry over into the various domestic leagues?
Well, kind of.
Cricinfo’s fantastic stats section somewhat helped the theory hold water, by revealing that of the 87 T20 Internationals played since February 2005, only seven have been won by less than 10 runs (for the team batting first), and another three have been won by 3 wickets or less (teams batting second; all three were actually by 3 wickets). There have also been three tied games.
So, 13 results that you could call “close’ in 87 matches. As suggested by my soft-topped friend, India’s 5 run defeat of Pakistan in the 2007 T20 World Cup final ranks among those tight finishes, but the closest result (apart from the ties, obviously) was actually Australia holding on by a single run against New Zealand at the SCG in February this year.
In that same period, February 2005 to late last week, there’s been seven matches won by more than 60 runs (including four by more than 100), and another twelve won by 8 or more wickets (including five by 9 wickets, and two more by 10 wickets); a total of 19 “floggings” in all.
A quick glance over the 2009 Indian Premier League series currently under way shows that there have already been 6 “close” and one tied match out of the 37 played so far. There’s been 9 “floggings” too.
So while yes, there has been fewer games go right down the wire, there’s not quite as many hidings as I expected to see, and if anything, I think this adds to the perception that T20I matches do tend to be a bit monotonous.
The one comment I made to my driving-cap-needing pal was that from my limited playing experience in T20 games, “when a game goes the distance, it’s as tough a game as you can play, and quite exhausting mentally. But as you say, when one team falls over, my god it can drag on. I’ve found that around the 6-9 over mark you can tell how an innings will pan out, and it’s surprising how long those last 11-14 overs can take when you know you’re going to lose!!”
Adding to my observation, there have been a lot of run-of-the-mill T20I games won by say, 5 wickets, or by 30 or 40 runs, and without having delved that far into the stats, I’d argue that most of those games were over as a contest well before the eventual end.
So what does this mean for the upcoming T20 World Cup?
Well firstly, if you can watch it, good luck to you (damn Fox Sports for buying the rights). Secondly, hope that the two teams are pretty close comparatively around a third of the way through the second innings, especially during the early stages of the tournament.
Otherwise, if the monotony or the floggings continue, then maybe the concerns about the future of international Twenty20 cricket will gather momentum.
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