This week’s Roar and Against debate is Australia’s ongoing struggles in Twenty20 cricket. While Australia has marginally improved from eighth to sixth on the ICC rankings the side failed to make it out of round stage at the recent World Cup.
Each week two writers will go head-to-head, and will only have 250 words to get their point across on one of the big sporting issues of the week.
It will be up to you, in the comments section, to decide the winner. That winner will stay on and take on a new challenger and new topic. That challenger can be anyone, including any commenters who throw their hat in the ring.
For winning in week two on the NRL bunker topic, Roar guru Scott Pryde stays on and will take on Roar editor Patrick Effeney, who has been frothing from the sideline to try and have a crack.
Our hot topic this week?
Australia will never be a powerhouse in men’s T20 cricket
AGREE
Patrick Effeney (Roar Editor)
I don’t just agree with the topic, but will go as far to say that I don’t want Australia to ever be a powerhouse in men’s Twenty20 cricket.
To start with, it’s impossible for anyone to be a T20 powerhouse, and that’s all about the nature of T20 cricket.
The West Indies just won the ICC World Twenty20 – a fantastic achievement that I take nothing away from. However, it’s inconceivable that they could ever win a Test cricket tournament with their current line-up, should one ever exist. They don’t have good enough players to do good enough things consistently enough to win – their bowlers will stray from their line and lengths and be punished. Their batsmen will lose concentration and be punished.
Cricket is simple maths when it comes to determining the better team – the more balls there are, the more chances there are for a good team to show how good they are. That’s why Test cricket is the ultimate form of the game. More balls, more time, more chances. The team who does the most right over that time will win, and that’s why upsets are hard to achieve.
One day cricket has less balls, so it evens the playing field between good and bad teams. Twenty20 cricket does this even more. So I don’t believe anyone – even less so Australia with our blase attitude towards the shortest format – will be a Twenty20 powerhouse. It’s just too random.
And finally, and I think I’ll take a lot of Roarers with me here, I don’t want them to focus on being a T20 powerhouse. James Sutherland and co. would be doing a swell job by me if they keep us up the top of the Test and ODI rankings.
DISAGREE
Scott Pryde(Roar Guru)
How is it possible to say something will never happen? It just isn’t. Regardless, Australia have been the best both Test and One Day cricket at one time or another and that won’t change with T20 cricket.
While Australia have been accused of everything that relates to taking T20 cricket far too casually during the 10 or so years of its existence, saying they will never be a powerhouse is taking things too far.
As a player who only came out of juniors a few years ago, and someone who continues to umpire at a local junior level I have seen the transformation of the junior game first hand, and the way batting and indeed bowling has changed at a grassroots level.
Sure, there are still plenty of players going around who want to show the proper technique, but it’s aggressiveness in juniors that is one day going to relate to the Australian national team. As a test advocate myself, it is difficult to witness and realise the way cricket is going but there is no other alternative.
Look at the biggest cricket tournament in the world, the IPL. Players are making multi-million dollars in two months. That appeals to juniors who are going to form the basis of the Aussie team moving forward.
Furthermore, in this day and age people don’t have time for the longer forms of the game. Players want excitement and entertainment, and that is what T20 cricket delivers. If that is the way moving forward, then everyone is going to want to be the best.
Australia will improve. Mark my words.
So what about it Roarers? Who wins your vote for best-made argument this week?
Let us know in the comments section below and they’ll be our carryover champ for next week. Also let us know if you want to take part, and we can make that happen.
Claw
Guest
It's just stats. In a full T20 game, there are 240 balls bowled (plus extras). The shortest test match with a result in history was Aus v. South Africa in 1932 where 656 balls were bowled. So, the shorter the contest, the more luck is involved. That's not the same thing as saying "more luck than skill".
Chris Kettlewell
Roar Guru
I suspect what he's talking about is the fact that it is a game that one team can completely dominate but not be able to get the ball in the back of the net and then one little mistake and suddenly the concede against the run of play. Random is hardly the right word to use, but then it isn't with T20 cricket either.
Chris Kettlewell
Roar Guru
I don't know that's an issue so much. The big issue is that so many of our best players don't play much T20 because, unlike the IPL, which India schedule away from everything else so all their top players can play, the BBL is played simultaneously with tests so that many of our best players don't get a lot of T20 under their belts. Australia's 2 biggest issues with this tournament was: 1. Steve Smiths seems to have got spooked by that first Ashton Agar over into not trusting his spinners even when they were by far the most effective bowlers in games, and kept bowling NCN and Faulkner for 4 overs each even when getting smashed and leaving overs of spin in hand. 2. The one pace bowler we have who is absolutely lethal in T20 cricket was out injured. If Starc wasn't injured, and Australia went in with a bowling lineup of Starc + Watson plus 3-4 spinners that could have been a winning team with the exact same batting lineup.
Chris Kettlewell
Roar Guru
Have to disagree here. Sure you get lucky at times, but T20 has it's own skills. You get batsmen who seem to be able to hit the ball to the boundary almost regardless of where you bowl and bowlers who can come on when batsmen seem to be batting like that and seem almost impossible to hit. There is significant skill in all that. To come in and bowl that final over against a good hitter and make it really hard for them to be able to make good connection with the ball, to having the shot making versatility to be able to handle just about anything the bowler throws at you and still hit it out of the park. Australia didn't do particularly well in the World T20, that's no reason to dismiss T20 as being a competition that's more about luck than skill.
Pom in Oz
Roar Guru
Soccer is probably the LEAST random game played on the world stage! What on earth makes you think it's random, Johnno? The reason the best teams win is entirely because it isn't random.
Johnno
Guest
People go on about the randomness of T-20 but look at soccer. Mostly the best or most talented side still wins the world cups etc. Yes sometimes you'll get a Greece win Euro 2004, or Denmark Euro 92, but mostly the big sides win the soccer world cups and Euros etc. And soccer is a random game.
VivGilchrist
Guest
Windies won using the biff/bash method.... what's your point?
Paul Potter
Roar Guru
Sympathize with Patrick's sentiments but I gotta go with Scott on this one. I think there'll be a much bigger period of exclusively T20 cricket before the next World T20 for example.
ChrisB
Guest
Three comments for Patrick 1- given T20 will be the most popular format internationally in the future can we afford to be not good at it? Especially if 2- only is and Rngland are still regularly playing tests, a scenario I would argue is entirely feasible 3- you can already see regular models and theories of play altering T20 away from just the simple biff/bash it originally was (and Australia still think it is, to our detriment). This would reduce the randomness in future to allow someone to dominate.
Daniel Jeffrey
Editor
Much as I'd love for us to stay as cricketing antiquities and remain as test and one-day powerhouses, it's almost impossible to imagine the Aussies not going through a successful trot in the game's shortest format. Gotta go with Scott on this one.
Kaks
Roar Guru
We can be, as long as we pick the best players for T20 and not the best Test players to play T20. That was the issue for the world cup and has been our issue with T20 for a while now. Just like ODI where some players excel at the shorter format compared to Test matches.
Benjamin Conkey
Editor
Back to comment after being smashed by Scott last week! Well played Scott. I don't think it's a fluke that the West Indies won in 2012, had a strong showing in 2014 (beaten by eventual champion SL on Duckworth-Lewis) and then won again in 2016. Their game is suited to Twenty20 Cricket. It's a skill to have players that can come in and belt it straight away, consistently. It's also a skill to have bowlers who understand that one over a good ball is line and length and the next it might be a low full toss, depending on who is on strike. In saying that I'm going with Scotty on this one..I think Australia will eventually get the tactics right and focus on developing a solid team that may look completely different to the ODI lineup.
Stucco
Guest
I agree with Patrick, as his "less balls per game" argument makes sense. No team has gone through the World T20 unbeaten, it's just about when you lose. Every team's fortunes will wax and wane, which makes every game exciting in a "I can't pick this" kind of way but also with a large side order of random.
Joe Frost
Editor
Gotta go with Scott here. I agree with Paddy - I'd love for our focus for always to be on Tests (ODIs... hey, sure, why not). But I think it's swimming against the tide. When kids hear about the millions on offer for a few weeks work, coupled with the ratings and sheer enjoyment people get out of T20, it appears to be the inevitable future. Luckily, if it is, the Aussies will be awesome at it. Eventually.
Lancey5times
Guest
Patrick gets my vote. We own the two that I feel matter the most and still get to enjoy the T20 WC when it swings around every fortnight. If we can get lucky next time and make the last 4 that's a win in my book
While we're at it
Guest
I don't see the IPL as the biggest tournament, I see it as the one that pays the most money to the players. Tailored to the Indian audience, with a population that simply dwarfs any other cricket playing nation, it is almost a court jester scenario for the mega rich big Indian companys who love their toys, in this case humans who crave big paychecks. Meanwhile a large percentage of over 1 billion people in that neck of the world see none of the money and live in abject poverty. T20 is a game of chance. 1 individual innings of note, even 1 over of note can swing a finely balanced game far too quickly, as we saw the other night. Not since Bruce Reid failed to defend 18 runs in a 1 dayer @ the SCG has a bowler been subjected to the death by so few blows. An accumulation of 137 runs in 19 overs, or 114 balls, was put to one side as 24 runs came off of 4 balls. In a mathematical equation that is 15% of the teams score in 3.33% of the available deliveries. I too believe that no 1 team will dominate this format, as chance plays too large a part.
Marshall
Guest
Exactly, as you reduced the duration of the match, the degree of fortune that goes into a win increaeses - I.E. Gaps in skill are reduced. Hence why 'Test' Cricket is a TEST over 5 days, and it is so much rarer for an upset to occur.
Harvey Wilson
Roar Rookie
I agree. If everyone is trying to slog, sometimes it will come off, sometimes it won't. There is a lot of chance in T20 and the best team on paper isn't necessarily going to win.
madmonk
Guest
In the current format of the World T20 world cup (which I love) no one will ever dominate. One of T20's virtues is its randomness and its capacity to highlight individual outstanding performance. Australia will learn to be better at it and we will have great games but I don't think anyone will ever dominate.