In 2007, Chris Gayle and Herschelle Gibbs had laid the foundation of what was later to be seen as the preface to an era in cricket that had the world divided.
Divided, not just in terms of the viability and the credibility of the format, but also in terms of the benefits or the losses that it caused to the sport at large.
T20 cricket has been a revelation of sorts and has enunciated both, the limits of experimentation, as well as far-reaching possibilities that come with little tweaks being introduced to the way the game has been played.
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T20 Cricket: A batsman’s safe haven
With the boundaries getting shorter and shorter, the bats getting heavier and heavier, and the change in mindset that has come with the need to smack the ‘white thing’ to all possible corners, being a bowler has become equivalent to becoming a war prisoner.
Since the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 or thereabout, we’ve seen unbelievable things take place on the cricket field. We’ve seen a hundred being raised off 31 balls, we’ve seen targets in excess of 200 being hunted down with utter disdain in 20-over competition, and we’ve seen run-rates in excess of 10 rpo become a norm.
The funny thing, however, is the fact that all the bowlers could do in this regard was wait for the batsman to be compassionate enough to make a mistake. The wickets everywhere around the world, especially for limited-overs competitions have been flat with absolutely no help for the bowlers.
A bowler bowls to take wickets and to take wickets his skills have to be backed by good captaincy, sharp fielding, but most importantly, helpful conditions from the pitch so that it assists the deliveries and not renders them as tricky as the darts thrown at the dartboard.
Challenging conditions this World T20
It is in this regard that the ICC World T20 2016 has come as a refreshing change, at least as far as the balance between the bat and the ball is concerned, as it has seen low totals being defended, but most importantly, it has seen teams adapt to the change in conditions.
Out of the 40 innings played so far in the Super 10 stage, a total in excess of 180 has been registered only 8 times. Out of those 8 innings, a 180+ total has been chased only twice. This gives one a fair idea of how tough it has been for batsmen to get the runs in the tournament.
The direct relation of such a predicament is with the surfaces that have been on offer. Going with the premise that the conditions are the same for each team, no matter how batsmen friendly or bowler friendly they are, batting in this tournament has largely depended on the batsmen’s ability to adapt.
New Zealand: The team that has adapted the best
The tournament opener between India and New Zealand is an apt example of that. On a slow, turning Nagpur wicket, the Kiwis bettered the home side in terms of adjusting to the conditions and exploiting the conditions better.
Known traditionally for their pace battery, NZ surprised everyone by picking three spinners in Nathan McCullum, Mitchell Santner, and Ish Sodhi at the behest of Trent Boult and Tim Southee- two of the best fast bowlers in world cricket at the moment.
The spin trio answered the call of the captain, Kane Williamson, and bowled with enough flight and guile to extract he turn out of the surface and trap the Indians in their own web. The Indian spin duo of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja failed to read the conditions and bowled a flatter trajectory like they had been bowling in Australia.
If that remarkable defence by New Zealand was good, their game against Australia was even better.
They had a slightly better total to defend, 142, than what they had against India, but the manner in which their bowlers came back especially after the blitzkrieg partnership between Usman Khawaja and Shane Watson, was nothing short of remarkable.
And, it wasn’t just the spinners that played a pivotal role in the victory. The surface at Dharamshala, the venue of the aforementioned game, had a loopy kind of bounce, and the ball was holding off the surface making in incredibly difficult for the batsmen to time it.
The NZ pacers read that beautifully and continued bowling back-of-a-length deliveries or short balls, and almost all the Australian batsmen perished trying to clear the fence, despite knowing very well that it was extremely difficult to hit the ball in the air on the slow surface.
If New Zealand displayed exemplary skills when it came to bowling, the other two semi-finalists, India and England displayed tremendous batting skills under pressure.
Virat Kohli: The T20 superhuman
India were under the pump early on in the tournament when they lost their opening game against the Kiwis which made the forthcoming match against Pakistan a do-or-die battle.
Once again, outside of their comfort zone, the pitch at the Eden Gardens, the rescheduled venue, was a slow surface with plenty in it for the spinners. The rain curtailed match, reduced to 18 overs per side, saw Pakistan score 118 batting first.
Memories from the Asia Cup encounter between the arch-rivals came to the fore once again when Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Sami dismissed three of India’s top 4 inside the first 5 overs.
The deja vu, which was half-done till then, was completed by the man who had orchestrated the Indian victory in the Asia Cup as well, Virat Kohli, who played a mellifluent knock of 55 with 7 boundaries and a six.
On a slow surface, Kohli’s patience, temperament, and shot selection was put to the test and the Indian captain-in-waiting passed the examination with flying colours.
The adaptability from the flat tracks in Australia to surprisingly slow and turning surfaces in India was there for everyone to see, and that was the exact reason why the Delhi-born batsman carried the team into the semis almost single-handedly.
Kohli vs Australia: The magical innings
If against Pakistan he was magnificent, what transpired in the game against Australia was surreal and hard to believe. The match had all but slipped away from India’s hands, more so after Yuvraj Singh got injured midway, and couldn’t run to his full potential between the wickets.
Kohli, who had decided to play the anchor’s role was feeling the pressure as the doubles were being reduced to singles and the boundaries were hard to come by.
Yuvraj’s dismissal, however, changed things dramatically for India, and it was there that we saw how quickly Kohli could adapt and shift gears according to the situation.
While the beautifully carved out boundaries drew everybody's attention in the final overs, it was what happened before the 19th over- wherein Kohli had smashed Coulter-Nile for 4 fours- that shifted the momentum in India’s favour.
Kohli and the Indian captain, MS Dhoni, made sure that they made up for whatever runs were lost when Yuvraj and Kohli were batting by collecting as many as 6 doubles within the span of 4 overs, four of which came in one over- the 16th, bowled by Josh Hazlewood.
The Indian Test captain followed that up with a 19-run 18th over at the expense of James Faulkner and then bettered it with four boundaries in the next over to diminish Australia’s commanding position in the game within a span of 4 overs.
Such shift of momentum and the tempo was something unforeseen until Kohli made it happen.
New Zealand are the favourites
Not just these games, but some other games as well, such as the one between India and Bangladesh where Jasprit Bumrah bowled an excellent 19th over getting the yorkers in, and Afghanistan’s historic victory over West Indies, were prime examples of the need to adapt which was fulfilled by the players throughout the tournament.
So far, New Zealand have emerged as the best side of the tournament as they had in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 as they have remained unbeaten throughout the group stages. All they need to do is to make sure that they don’t falter in the final stages, unlike what they did last year.
The team has adapted to the Indian conditions even better than the Indians and the headline of NZ spinners winning their side a Cricket World Cup on subcontinental lands might soon be a reality.
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