6 of the most innovative tactics used in cricket in 2016

#5 Shepherding ALL the batswomen

There is no doubt about the winner of the ‘Scorecard of the year’ award. That clearly has to go to the scorecard of the Mpumalanga Under-19s Women v Easterns Under-19s Women T20 match at Pretoria (12^th December). 17-year old opener Shania-Lee Swart scored an unbeaten 160 as her teammates scored a hard-to-believe ZERO runs between them. There were 9 extras as Mpumalanga ended up with 169.

But how is this a tactic, you ask? According to the teenager’s father, the other girls were struggling against the Eastern bowlers, so Swart decided to keep most of the strike with wickets tumbling at the other end. This is a tactic employed by batsmen batting with the tail in Test matches, keeping most of the strike and shepherding the tail. But the difference was that Swart was shepherding all the other batswomen.

Swart herself explained that she was looking to be on strike at the start of every over, so she generally tried to take a single on the 5^th ball of the over. Amazingly, Swart faced 86 balls (14.2 overs) in the 20-over match and even took 2 wickets as well.

She also scored a stunning 289 out of her team’s 352 a few days before the match in question.