T20, and why we’re lucky to have this game
Our lives are riddled with luck. My dad was once driving down a wet street in Cardiff when a lorry was forced to break hard in front of him. The force of the sudden stop dislodged the lorry’s tailgate and caused it to come smashing down through the front window of my dad’s car. My dad wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He never did. He was free to duck low into the foot well and avoid being crushed.
I guess he was literally fortune’s fool. And it is the same for all of us. One man wins the lottery, another is diagnosed with cancer. Both Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler were hit by cars in 1931 and might have died. Instead one became Britain’s greatest hero, the other slaughtered millions of Jews.
Some societies don’t believe in luck. They think that misfortune is the product of malevolence and these people generally lead miserable lives. But every cricketer believes in luck. One day you nick the first ball. Another day you step on the stumps only to find the bowler had bowled a no ball.
This mad maelstrom of luck is the reason I don’t like Twenty20 cricket, I love it. The game swirls with luck. In just the past couple of matches edges have flown for six, helmets have dropped onto stumps, catches have been dropped, batsmen have been ‘out’ off no balls. Dame Fortune has had her hands full.
This is cricket reflecting our everyday lives. It is also what makes Eden Park such a magnificent ground for this form of cricket. The boundaries are so small that mad things happen on the pitch and mad things happen off the pitch, like Victoria University student Mitchell Grimstone taking a one-handed catch to win $50,000.
What a brilliant idea. You literally have to be in the right place at the right time. And then you have to survive the idiot who leaps across in a futile and greedy effort to steal your fortune. And then you need to hang on to the thing. And if you are a man with a big hand you have a better chance. Maybe luck reflects society.
America has long understood all of this. It is why baseball is their national game. It is why teams play 162 games in a season. If you only played 10, then luck would decide the winner. There are too many randoms, too many variables. You need multiple games to keep luck at bay and even then, she’ll be lurking somewhere near third base.
One day T20 cricket will come to some of the great baseball stadia of North America. The Indian Premier League is already sniffing the commercial opportunities. Build it and they will come. Even now the voices are whispering in the American cornfields.
So surely England coach Trevor Bayliss is mad when he says: ‘‘I wouldn’t play T20 internationals ... If we continue putting on so many games there will be a certain amount of blowout, not just players but coaches as well.’’
Look, you dumb Aussie, professional sport is entertainment. You are paid to entertain people. It is what distinguishes you from amateur sport. There were 33,000 in Eden Park the other night. Hamilton was a sellout. The spectators are having a ball. And they are paying your wages. So wake up.
And New Zealand need to wake up too. Kane Williamson said after they lost to Australia on Friday night: ‘‘It’s hard to be too critical. It’s hard to learn a huge amount from.’’
Whoa. It’s one thing to smile like David Warner throughout the mayhem. That’s positive cricket. But afterwards is a time to reflect. You can’t control luck, but you can reduce it.
When Ben Wheeler bowled ball after ball on a ‘good length’ at Eden Park, he was begging to be ‘unlucky’. The balls were bound to fly to the short boundaries if they caught a hard-swinging edge.
When New Zealand bowled ten wide balls and two no balls, they were inviting misfortune. The deliveries themselves cost them 27 runs, which was about the rate Australia were going at. But the extra balls that New Zealand had to bowl cost 34 runs, with one unused. That was the match. That was dumb luck.
As dumb as the reluctance to bowl really full. Ross Detwiler, the pitcher for the Washington Nationals, has thrown 379 fastballs in 420 pitches this season and most of them have been low. He has gone for 4 earned runs in 26 innings. His pace and height are fairly predictable, but he is damned hard to hit.
So why don’t New Zealand bowl more yorkers? Lasith Malinga kept slinging them down and noone got him away. Chris Jordan kept bowling them in the penultimate over of the match against England and Mark Chapman didn’t have a clue what to do. As Colin Munro said: ‘‘Everybody knows that the yorker is the hardest ball to get hold of.’’
So why oh why then did not Trent Boult, a superb bowler of the yorker, bowl one at the end of the England innings? The match came down to the last ball. New Zealand had a three-run lead. Boult bowled short and was whacked for six. Curran bowled full and Colin de Grandhomme could only smear him for one.
There will be times in the final when New Zealand will only be able to smile at dumb luck. But sometimes you can control your fate. Just look at Brendon McCullum. He has put a baseballstyle knob on the end of his handle to stop the bat flying out of his hand when he gives it the baseball slog.
Otherwise it would be just Baz’s luck to kill someone with a flying bat.