New Delhi: Numbers can be very deceptive in cricketing universe.
Start torturing them and it will give us what we would want to know. And it can happen quite often in cricket too.
Sri Lanka chasing down a mammoth 430 inside 50 overs or India successfully hunting down 406 on surfaces which are mirror images of ‘National Highways’ would often forcefully indicate that these once impossible to chase totals are now eminently chaseable because of the adventurous out-of-the box shot-making that T20 cricket warrants.
But then comes Auckland and Wellington, where some of the prima donnas of world cricket resemble cats on hot tin roof, unable to negotiate the dual nature of extra seam movement and the white Kookaburra bouncing six inches extra.
Virat Kohli provided a timely reminder of the value of experience and adaptability in India’s opening ODI against New Zealand in Auckland with a superbly controlled 74, but the second game in Wellington offered a contrasting picture of batting on a surface that demanded technique, restraint and patience.
Three days later, however, the batting challenge was markedly different on a seaming Wellington surface.
The two matches, played in contrasting conditions, have brought an important question back into focus: has the advent and dominance of T20 cricket altered the technical foundations and patience of batters in the 50-over format?
Structural change in top batter’s technique
In the pre-IPL and franchise T20 era, the term hard hands wasn’t in vogue as far as ODI cricket was concerned as most of the top batters made transition from red ball to white ball limited overs cricket which was confined to 50-over format.
But in the decade between 2008 to 2017, T20 cricket brought about a tectonic shift in the techniques due to demand of explosive power in shot-making during powerplay.
The propensity to push at deliveries, meeting it early with hard hands has certainly made top-order batters vulnerable the moment they play on tracks that might have some extra juice.
To come up trumps while facing lateral movement, the balance becomes very important as one needs to meet the ball below eyeline rather than hitting through the line with a hands- first approach.
Between 2000 and 2007, the pre-T20 era, batters scored at an average strike rate of 64.27 while facing 34.01 balls per dismissal. During 2008-2015, when T20 cricket began influencing the international game more significantly, the strike rate rose to 67.27, an increase of 4.67 per cent.
However, balls faced per dismissal dropped to 32.30, a decline of approximately 5.03 per cent from the earlier period.
For the record. it must be mentioned that strike-rate mentioned is from data collated from batters 1 to 11 across teams.
Risk-control trade-off
In modern game, data analysts of various teams have also started using a new variable — ‘Control Percentage’. It indicates the number of shots that a particular batter played with absolute control in the number of deliveries faced. It also factors in the mishits as well as the deliveries that missed edges, dot balls and dropped catches.
Because of T20s, the risk-taking threshold has increased considerably even as batters have decided to forego a bit of control. In easier words — this is precisely what ‘High Risk High Reward’ game looks like.
As per data sourced from ESPN Cricinfo’s search engine, ODI teams were bowled out in roughly 29 percent of innings during the 1980s, but the advent of T20s meant that post the 2020s, that number has risen to 38 percent.
The numbers indicate that even as there is a sharp spike in boundary count, batters have lost control percentage.
While Wellington might be an aberration but if one compares the ‘Control percentage’ of Indian batters to that of England’s ODI team over the years, the data does present a favourable picture.
Indian teams over past five years have mostly blended caution and aggression in equal measure compared to England whose attack at all costs approach hasn’t always yielded results in big events.
As per Cricinfo data, England in the Bazball era have had an average Team ‘Control percentage’ of 76.5 – 78.2 percent. But when it comes to India, courtesy senior pros Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill and KL Rahul, the ‘Team Control Percentage’ is around 82.8 to 84.6.
Subsequently the false shot rate for England is nearly 22 percent compared to India’s 15. England’s reliance on boundaries has been 10 percent more at 62 to India’s 52. The powerplay score for 105-112 for England compared to India’s 88-95.
But when it comes to win percentage, India (62.1%) is way ahead in last two years (2024-2026) having played 29 games in which they recorded 18 wins.
Australia in the same period played 28 games with a winning percentage of 53.6 %. New Zealand has win percentage of 52 with 13 wins in 25 games. South Africa’s winning percentage is 45.8 in the said period with England having registered less than 35 percent wins.
When a former India cricketer, who retired only a few years back, was asked about India’s show in Wellington and whether T20 has had an impact, he gave a contrarian viewpoint.
“I will give you an example. In 2002, India lost 2-5 in New Zealand in a seven game ODI series. Who were your batters? Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid.
“There was no T20Is back then and India could hardly get past 200-run mark. The pitches were such. Yes, they play high-risk high reward game but put Aussies or English on the same track. Result would be same or much worse,” the cricketer who didn’t wish to be named, said.
