Big Bash League, Australia
The thrill of the chase – is it all it’s cracked up to be? As far as Twenty20 cricket goes, that would be a ‘yes’, as captains far and wide move towards the desire of batting second in the shortest form of the game.
Perhaps not as much a ‘thrill’ as a sly tactical manoeuvre, the option of chasing has seemed much more in vogue, and statistics back up a feeling that teams now like to have a target in their sights as they blast the ball round the park.
From a time when the toss probably seemed mostly redundant in a game which itself can often be likened to the flip of a coin too, it can now be seen as a massive psychological boost for a team.
T20 is well over a decade old, but, despite wickets not deteriorating across a 40-over period, it’s becoming more difficult to tell what a good score is anymore, as 200-plus totals and individual centuries come increasingly frequently, among ever-inventive strokeplay.
It seemed not long ago the idea was to bat first and go large, with a bulky score sure to blow a chasing side out of a contest early, but now the mind boggles at what is possible, with the polished ability to break down and manage a chase making nothing seem impossible for a batting-second unit.
As the T20 tri-series between the Black Caps, Australia and England roars along, it will be interesting to keep an eye on the approach of the teams at toss time. Already, two games in, Aussie captain David Warner has opted to field first both times, and has emerged victorious both times.
Those games have contributed to the overall T20 International bat-first statistics now dropping below 50 per cent, after 645 games. In context, ODIS are at 52 per cent, and tests are 73 per cent.
The stats show that while the first 50 of those T20IS played had a slight favour of teams opting to field first – 54 per cent – it has now risen to 68 per cent over the most recent 50, up until that second match of the tri-series.
And it’s not even the internationals where the big changes are noticed most, with Australia’s Big Bash League and the Indian Premier League having decisive shifts in the fieldfirst mentality, while New Zealand’s Super Smash is an interesting outlier of those domestic tournaments looked at.
The inaugural season of the competition saw the stunning stat of just three field-first choices at the toss out of 31 games (9.68 per cent).
The following year fielding first rose to 45.71 per cent, with a win-rate for those chasing of 62.50 per cent, before last summer the field-first mentality went full on at 80 per cent. And the seven teams who did opt to bat first all lost.
This just-completed season saw fielding first again popular, at 69.77 per cent, though interestingly enough, the team which eventually won the competition – the Adelaide Strikers – opted to bat first on all six occasions they won the toss, and won every time.
Indian Premier League
The first season of the glitz and glamour show in 2008 had fielding first at 55.17 per cent, dropping the following year to 38.60 per cent.
Now, in the past two years, the chasing thing has caught on bigtime, over 80 per cent each year, and with win-rates on balance being in favour of those sides batting second.
Super Smash, NZ
New Zealand’s domestic competition is an interesting outlier, bucking the trend, as batting first remains reasonably popular.
It wasn’t a big sample size for its first year, with just seven games, but the five times sides fielded first they won. The next season it was a 50 per cent stalemate for batting and bowling first, across 16 games, but the last two campaigns have been a batfirst majority.
In 2016-17 fielding first was just 31.25 per cent, and remarkably only one of the 10 teams who opted to chase ended up winning. Perhaps that put sides off doing so for this recently-completed campaign, with fielding first at 41.38 per cent.
The Theory
Batting first has that unknown of what will be a good score. It requires a quick weighing up of conditions, and that can be the downfall of a team, when they look for too many than they actually may need. Black Caps captain Kane Williamson admitted after last Saturday’s match against Australia in Sydney that 140 may have been good enough on that pitch, but that his side wasn’t able to reign in their approach.
The other positive about fielding first is it generally means a team is able to stick to their bowling plans, obviously having to tweak things on the run, but not to the extreme that defending a middling target may require.
Bowlers know they have to just get wickets or not go for many runs. But for batsmen, having a black-and-white target in front of them seems to make life much clearer for an approach to have at the crease.
And ‘no fear’, is the modern mentality - they will back themselves to go out and get whatever is put in front of them, as they have seen their opposition do it right before their eyes.
One man who has seen the evolution first-hand, both in a playing and coaching capacity, is former New Zealand international Gareth Hopkins, who led the Northern Knights to Super Smash glory this summer in his first stint as a specialist T20 coach.
‘‘It’s an attitude shift of the batters, who don’t fear those higher run chases, because they’ve trained it - they’ve trained all their hitting into gaps and moving around the crease and sweeps and reverse sweeps,’’ he said.
‘‘When Twenty20 first started we were coming off when 250 was a good score in 50-over cricket.
‘‘All of a sudden we’re in an environment now where seven, eight an over’s very easy to chase down. Guys have trained this situation so many times, that 10s, 11s, 12s, they don’t fear that anymore. They don’t even fear 15 an over off the last three, they say ‘yep, we can get that’.
‘‘They have a plan for that. So it’s not as daunting chasing, as what it was five years ago.’’
The Knights made chasing a forte late in the competition – which included mowing down 203 against the Auckland Aces with six wickets and 3.1 overs to spare, along with a resounding ninewicket victory in the final against the Central Stags.
The Stags made no secret of
their liking of batting first, much like the Adelaide Strikers. Hopkins suggested it often came down to what the balance of sides were like – with both those teams having bowlers on fire, so wanting to do their ‘strongest’ suit last.
‘‘It’s your pressure one... if the game’s in the balance that’s what you want to do coming in to win the game,’’ he said.
‘‘If your team gets on a roll doing one thing, you tend to stick to it... as a coach you’re loath to change the formula.’’