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It took them a long time to catch on but teams at this World Cup have finally realised choosing to bat first is the most effective option.
Nearly two-thirds of the 34 completed matches in this tournament (up to yesterday) have been won by the team batting first. Further underlining the advantage of batting first is the fact there’s only been one successful chase of more than 250 in the whole tournament.
You didn’t expect that did you? You aren’t alone.
Quite bizarrely, the teams who won the toss opted to bat second in 17 out of the first 20 matches in this World Cup.
Since then there has been a dramatic turnaround in tactics, with only five of the last 14 toss winners opting to bat second.
The Cricket World Cup semis race is wide open. (Photo by Visionhaus/Getty Images)
Teams slowly have woken up to the fact that, amid the hefty pressure of a tournament, having to chase even a modest total is arduous.
Prior to the tournament there was a common narrative about how high scoring this World Cup may be, and that even totals of 350 might not be safe from chasers.
It is hard to pinpoint why there was such an obsession with wanting to bat second. One factor may be the influence of T20 cricket. It is now widely believed that batting second in a T20 allows a team to pace their innings with greater certainty.
That’s because, in an innings of just 20 overs, it is crucial to nail the tempo. By comparison, it is less important in an ODI. That is particularly so if there is pressure or batting conditions which are less than favourable.
Chasing 350 on a road in a largely meaningless bi-lateral series is easier than hunting 250 under tournament scrutiny on a pitch giving reasonable assistance to the bowlers.
A second factor contributing to the obsession with batting second may be the English conditions. When teams are doing the toss just after 10am in the morning, amid chilly temperatures and often overcast weather, it must be easy to get sucked in to the idea of bowling first.
In the knockout stages, however, I will be very surprised if any team chooses to chase unless, that is, the pitch looks like a green mamba.
What is pertinent to all of this is what has happened in the matches between the five teams vying most strongly to make the semi-finals.
The team batting first has dominated those games in this tournament, winning seven of the eight matches that have involved two out of Australia, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and England.
What’s more, batting first should only become more valuable in the knockout stages. The pressure of facing elimination from the tournament is particularly suffocating for the team that’s chasing. Runs on the board is the ultimate currency.
Australia have been playing with this in mind for some time. During Australia’s scorching run of 15 wins from their past 16 ODIs, they surprisingly have won the toss only four times and on each occasion they chose to bat first.
Their solitary loss in that time came while batting second, and 11 of those wins came while batting first.
Australia are old-school. They like the surety of batting first. This was conventional wisdom for most of ODI history – win the toss, bat first. Scoreboard pressure was treasured. It is only recently this notion was flipped.
Australia ignored the trend and kept batting first, kept taking their time, and kept aiming to explode later. It didn’t always work until it started to always work. Bat first to win this World Cup.