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Power hitting may be the sexiest aspect of T20 cricket but it was Australia’s inability to gather singles which cruelled them as they lost 3-0 against Pakistan over the past week.
Australia last night were in a strong position batting second after wicketkeeper Alex Carey, promoted to open the batting, slammed 20 runs from the opening over off star Pakistan spinner Imad Wasim.
With ten wickets in hand, Australia then needed only to score at 6.9 runs per over for the following 19 overs to chase down the target of 151. That is not a difficult task if a team collects plenty of singles and twos, and makes the most of the odd loose delivery.
Instead, they neglected to work the gaps, allowed pressure to build from dot balls and then sought a release by trying to manufacture a boundary.
Quite remarkably, dots accounted for about half the balls faced by each of Carey (5 dots from 9 balls), Chris Lynn (6 dots from 13), Ben McDermott (11 dots from 20), Mitchell Marsh (11 dots from 24), D’Arcy Short (8 dots from 15) and Glenn Maxwell (4 dots from 8).
(Giuseppe Cacace/AFP)
Australia ended up with a whopping 59 dots – which was 51 per cent of all balls they faced – as they were bowled out for 117. By comparison, Pakistan only allowed dots from 38 per cent of the deliveries they faced and even then, the Pakistani TV commentators were highly critical of this aspect of the home side’s batting.
It was the same story across the whole series. In the first match, Pakistan’s dot ball percentage was only 31 per cent compared to an incredible 58 for Australia, and in the second match, Pakistan again went at 31 per cent versus 50 per cent for Australia.
Across the whole series, Australia faced on average 20 more dots per innings than Pakistan.
It is now clear that while on the flatter pitches in places like Australia and England the Aussies can load up on power hitters, on slower decks they need at least one more conventional batsman tasked with steering the innings.
Going forward, that man looks most likely to be Steve Smith. Despite underperforming in T20Is so far, the banned skipper has played that anchor role extremely well in the Indian Premier League, where he has scored 1703 runs at 36.
Aside from Australia’s lack of an accumulator-style batsman, this series has also cast further doubts over the suitability of Chris Lynn and D’Arcy Short for limited overs cricket in Asia. Both batsmen are famously potent against pace but are comparatively impotent against the slow men. Neither batsman appeared to have a clear plan as to how to either get off strike or score boundaries against spin in this series.
(Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images)
Short deserves a bit more patience given he has overall made a good start to his T20 career in the green and gold, with 461 runs at 38.
Lynn, however, is yet to take a bite out of international cricket. After 14 T20 internationals the Queensland blaster has made just 214 runs at 19, with a slow strike rate of 127 – well below his scorching rate of 146 at lower levels.
On several occasions, it has appeared as though his inability to get off strike against spinners has muddled Lynn’s mind. When then he finally faces his favoured style – pace bowling – he seems too eager to make up for lost time, attempting to thrash deliveries which aren’t there to be hit.
Ben McDermott, meanwhile, is a wonderfully talented young player but has absolutely butchered the gilded opportunity he was handed in this series. Somehow, the 23-year-old has managed to get himself run out three times in four innings. And all three were his fault.
The first two saw McDermott whack the ball to an offside fielder, set off for a kamikaze run and be caught short. Last night he attempted to do the same thing but was sent back by Maxwell, who called “no” repeatedly from the moment McDermott hit the ball.
It is a gobsmacking series of errors for a rookie to commit in their first international tour. Hopefully, McDermott will learn.
The same goes for Australia, who simply must address their one-note approach to T20 batting.