The Recipe for Modern-Day ODI Success: Batting with T20 Flair, Bowling with Test Cricket Precision

[Stewie]

Watching this World Cup it has dawned on me that while ODIs are a dying format, there is still a manner of complexity and nuance in how to win games particularly in subcontinental conditions.

Most teams have adopted the approach that ODIs are an extension of T20 cricket so they approach batting with a break neck speed. But that’s not all there is to it. Because the balance has tilted so much in favor of the bat in recent years, a genuine wicket taking bowler is prime value in this format. If your bowling allows the top 6 or 6 of any team to bat out 50, you are easily starting at 350 to chase.

This is where wicket takers come in. Sure they will go for runs early on but if you keep bowling wicket taking deliveries, all it takes is 6/7 good ones in the first 30 overs to take the advantage of the slog away from your opposition in the final 20. We have seen it several times in this World Cup.

In terms of where WE went wrong, we batted like it’s test cricket and we took T20 bowlers.

I hope the Pakistan think tank sees that.

 

[Savak]

Change starts from domestic cricket. Batters have to be flexible like you see with the Indian team for eg Kohli resorts to disciplined technical batting on difficult pitches, situations, resorts to power hitting on flat sublime batting wickets, rotating the strike and finding the gaps in the field on sporting wickets.

Instructions must be send to domestic coaches and selectors to tell batters to bat in a certain manner ie minimum strike rate of 130-150 in T20 and ODI cricket ie every batter must find a way to hit a boundary or six every over otherwise you will not be picked.

 

[Stewie]

Change starts from domestic cricket. Batters have to be flexible like you see with the Indian team for eg Kohli resorts to disciplined technical batting on difficult pitches, situations, resorts to power hitting on flat sublime batting wickets, rotating the strike and finding the gaps in the field on sporting wickets.

Instructions must be send to domestic coaches and selectors to tell batters to bat in a certain manner ie minimum strike rate of 130-150 in T20 and ODI cricket ie every batter must find a way to hit a boundary or six every over otherwise you will not be picked.

My point was you can make it work with given resources if you plan accordingly. If we had taken power hitters with the team, with players like Babar and Rizwan, our batting would have fared better. Rather than taking test class batsmen who all bat decent but may not have the power hitting area covered.

Similarly with bowlers we had T20 bowlers who don’t know the art of the long game and taking wickets.

So in my view the problem was not with the skill set, it was “picking” the wrong skill set

While the team was in the World Cup, I supported them but now that they are out I think it’s fair to dissect what went wrong and in my view largely it was this.

 

[Savak]

My point was you can make it work with given resources if you plan accordingly. If we had taken power hitters with the team, with players like Babar and Rizwan, our batting would have fared better. Rather than taking test class batsmen who all bat decent but may not have the power hitting area covered.

Similarly with bowlers we had T20 bowlers who don’t know the art of the long game and taking wickets.

So in my view the problem was not with the skill set, it was “picking” the wrong skill set

While the team was in the World Cup, I supported them but now that they are out I think it’s fair to dissect what went wrong and in my view largely it was this.

Not sure who could we have picked as power hitters. Our domestic power hitters like Khusdil, Asif have had numerous chances, they lack the 360 degree stroke play of Maxwell, Klassen which makes it easy for the opposition to bowl to them.

 

[Stewie]

Not sure who could we have picked as power hitters. Our domestic power hitters like Khusdil, Asif have had numerous chances, they lack the 360 degree stroke play of Maxwell, Klassen which makes it easy for the opposition to bowl to them.

Well I think we could have managed it with one or two changes. But overall our batting was not that bad although we could be a lot better. Had it not been for Fakhar I think it did pretty poorly.

Mainly it was the bowling that struggled. Raif and Shadab either need more work or not played ODIs. Obviously someone like Abrar would have been better.

 

[Dr_Bassim]

ODIs may be dying.

But some truths remain.

The only way to win ODI matches nowadays batting first is to bat the opposition out of the match.

Pakistan were not convincing enough to do that. If your captain is targeting a 280 even before batting first, there is absolutely no way we are going to win. Even Wasim Akram, Glenn Mcgrath and Shane Warne in the same team cannot defend 280 as the pitches are more batter friendly and the rules of the game are tilted towards the batsmen. You need to score 330-380 runs to bat the opposition out of the match on most pitches.

Batting second, don't let the other 8 guys worry about the RRR and keep the RRR in check if you want to win the match.

Whenever Pakistan batted, it was going through their motions. Every Pakistani batsmen was looking to score for his own reason and self and wanted to come out as the one who scored a 50 and the others failed. There was no team work or team value and the RRR kept going higher in most matches Pakistan played. It is not the job of number 5 or 6 or 7 to somehow magically hit 10 an over in the fag end of the innings and win you the match because you played 60 off 80 balls and secured your place for next 10 matches.

The old adage of building partnerships still remains true

Cant win if you can't build partnerships. Yes, you have to attack but if you are going to lose 8-36 vs India in the process or 8-36 vs Australia for that matter, you aren't going to be winning a lot of games. Partnerships mean batting at 5-6 an over with occasional boundaries, running those hard 2s and 3s and making sure the game is dynamic. It also doesn't mean hitting one 6 and then blocking the next 5 deliveries as our batsmen are so much guilty of doing.

Wickets win you matches

You can defend all you want but when the batsmen is set he is going to clobber you each and every single time or by the time your bowlers start bowling at the death the score is already 350 plus and anything you do is pointless. This is what happened to Pakistan time and again. Also in the middle overs those part timers like Smith and Root shouldn't be your premier spinners. If you take such quality spinners, you make yourself look like a fool.

Strategic planning and flexibility

And finally, you need to plan how to win the match in advance and need to be flexible in your approach. Pakistan and Babar were guilty of forming a plan and sticking to it and had no clue how to deviate from the norm when things were not going as expected. At the end of the day, the entire team looked like deer caught in headlights.


The honest truth is ODIs are built on dynamic batsmen with partnerships and won by wicket taking bowlers who change the game for the country.

This line won't change even in 50 years.

Pakistan is guilty of believing that taking the game deep and letting number 5 and 6 and 7 win it is the way to win the tournament.

 

[Bilal Ahmad15]

My point was you can make it work with given resources if you plan accordingly. If we had taken power hitters with the team, with players like Babar and Rizwan, our batting would have fared better. Rather than taking test class batsmen who all bat decent but may not have the power hitting area covered.

Similarly with bowlers we had T20 bowlers who don’t know the art of the long game and taking wickets.

So in my view the problem was not with the skill set, it was “picking” the wrong skill set

While the team was in the World Cup, I supported them but now that they are out I think it’s fair to dissect what went wrong and in my view largely it was this.

Please name these power hitters that were missing

 

[Savak]

T20 death bowling skills are needed in ODIs

 

[jnaveen1980]

Very very basic requirement. Having one bowler that the opposition wants to see off. Even one bowler can make a huge difference. Take out Zampa. Australia would have struggled against many countries. But despite many of their bowlers being out of form he stood out.

 

[kingusama92]

The bowling can be solved.

Naseem pushes everyone into more realistic roles. He's the new ball specialist alongside Shaheen. You can then work on finding a death bowler whether it's Wasim JR or Rauf.

They just need a good specialist spinner and they will be good to go.

The batting is a mess though.

 

[Cric1234]

Please name these power hitters that were missing

Saim Ayub
Fakhar Zaman
Umar Akmal
M Haris
Haris Sohail
Sharjeel Khan
Iftikhar Ahmed

Maybe a few others untested players aswell in domestic cricket in today’s ODI cricket you need these type of players to play around a few anchor role players Pakistan definitely has players who can make 40s 50s 60s at over 100 strike rate unfortunately only Fakhar was selected and Iftikhar in the lower order.

 

[Cric1234]

Now people will say this guys chubby a bit past his prime young raw etc but the thing is the current players who were selected were never going to win high scoring matches against the top 5 teams when you had no real chance anyway it was better to select players who at least gave you some chance if they click of winning a few matches to qualify for the knockouts.

 

[hitthestump]

Saim Ayub - Afghan series showed he is not ready yet, give him time but he is one for the future
Fakhar Zaman - already there and woeful for most of his last 18-20 innings
Umar Akmal - Lol
M Haris - Even more raw than Saim
Haris Sohail - Broken, his body cannot handle international cricket
Sharjeel Khan - A categorical disgrace to himself and Pakistan
Iftikhar Ahmed - Would be very handy in an over 50's seniors league but not in international cricket

We can try and play uber aggressive cricket but the idea falls flat immediately because we don't have the personnel for it.

People forget that we tried to incorporate hitters during the Haider, Asif Ali and Khushdil phase. Very quickly everyone was calling for 'proper batters' because these three couldn't offer anything at all.

Now the cycle repeats itself and we probably will pick 'hitters' before once again realising the ones we have are useless.

The only exceptions are Haris and Saim who are very raw and need to be handled appropriately. We cannot destroy them like we did with Haider and only recently in this WC with Usama Mir.

 

[Cric1234]

We can try and play uber aggressive cricket but the idea falls flat immediately because we don't have the personnel for it.

People forget that we tried to incorporate hitters during the Haider, Asif Ali and Khushdil phase. Very quickly everyone was calling for 'proper batters' because these three couldn't offer anything at all.

Now the cycle repeats itself and we probably will pick 'hitters' before once again realising the ones we have are useless.

The only exceptions are Haris and Saim who are very raw and need to be handled appropriately. We cannot destroy them like we did with Haider and only recently in this WC with Usama Mir.

I stopped reading when you wrote woeful next to Fakhar when the only high scoring match Pakistan won against the top 5 teams was because of Fakhars hundred against New Zealand.

I expected someone to give this kind of response you know what let’s have Abdullah Imam Babar Saud In The top 4 and bring Azhar Ali too to see off the new ball in South Africa at the next World Cup.

 

[Cric1234]

If you think Iftikhar was bad the stats don’t agree with your pre conceived notions he had strikes rates of 122 and 115 in the Asia Cup and World Cup which shows he scored at a decent rate unfortunately our top order had too many 80 strike rate players to win high scoring matches.

 

[Cric1234]

I won’t say much about Umar Akmal and Haris Sohail despite them averaging 45 plus in first class dismissing this silly comparison with Asif and Khushdil as they are batsmen with proper techniques while Asif and Khushdil are hacks with poor first class averages not made for ODIs.

 

[Bhaijaan]

Don’t even talk about T20 batting or bowling.

ODI cricket is a format which demands its own specialists. Also it’s been seen that ODIs are actually closer to Test cricket than T20 cricket as opposed previously thought

 

[Savak]

Want to see Fakhar, Sharjeel opening in T20 Cricket with Saim Ayub coming one down

 

[Phantom Menace]

ODI is an extension of T20 when the pitches are flat. If pitches have assistance to the bowler, or if they are too slow to time shots well then batsmen who are capable of constructing innings at a classical ODI pace of the times when 270-310 was par score are still valuable.

 

[Energy]

The wicket taking rhetoric is another flawed misconception taken by Pakistan to the lowest of depths.

If a bowler can land 5 out of 6 balls on a good length they'll take wickets automatically as there's pressure on batters to score runs. And I'm not even talking about swinging or spinning the ball. That's a bonus. Pakistan bowlers cannot do that.

Pakistan have allowed Shaheen to bowl as per his will during the powerplay. They've allowed Haris to bowl as per his will and spray around, thinking he's a wicket taker. Systematic flaw.

 

[WengerOut]

I am pretty sure people responsible would zero in on the default reason, the missing player ( this time Naseem Shah ). They might sprinkle on "Shaheen not fully fit " reason as needed as well.