A Compulsory White-Ball Reset for All Teams (Emphasis on Pakistan)
Playing T20s is to be done the England way. That is the only way.
Two subcontinental teams played in the semi-finals of this world cup.
In total, there were three teams that played in the semi-finals who all follow a similar progression:
- Hold wickets, score runs, occasional boundaries in overs 7-15, and accelerate.
New Zealand are not quite the same, but I will still put them in this category because they are also not a team that goes out swinging.
Out of all of these teams, all of whom had no home advantage here, it was England's approach that took them to the final and eventually gave them the trophy.
A lot of this has to do with the way their cricketing system operates, especially in white-ball cricket. The ultra-positive cricketing approach is the new deal; teams that refuse to cooperate with this approach will soon be left in the dust.
However, this template itself is difficult to adopt because it requires the development of a system. We in Pakistan know how unlikely it is to see the system being developed to properly nurture a new cricketing mindset; where batsmen step out of their shells and instead are playing for more than just retention of a spot on a team, playing with a purpose and aggression to pin oppositions down.
Batsmen in T20s put too high of a value on their wickets, and as a result, cost their team matches. Babar, Rizwan, KL, Kohli, Williamson, and a long list of others are prime examples of this. Kohli is no doubt the most successful of the bunch, but he has been included in this list solely because of the batting template he followed in this World Cup (which cost India in the semi-final). A player who possesses remarkable ability to accelerate yet leaves the acceleration towards the end, playing run-a-ball in the crucial middle-overs (seen in IPL as well), has not had the impact that is expected of him.
Players like Babar and Rizwan are quite obviously a different case; they do not possess that same skillset, but have not shown an interest in the long time they have opened to play freely, positively, and score quickly.
"Positive cricket" is not just slapping sixes and boundaries; drop and run, applying pressure on the field, developing and accessing new scoring areas are all forms of playing positive cricket.
From now on, I will focus exclusively on Pakistan:
For a team with such a brilliant bowling lineup, especially this tournament, by far the best bowling attack that we have had in a white-ball tournament for a long time, our batting has been atrocious.
Players have had more than enough time to acclimatize to the conditions presented towards them, and the batting woes go down to nothing but mental weakness and the lack of courage to make big decisions.
For our own standards, we were quite decently poised by the 10th over, but this is the issue with the batting template we operate with; the day the middle order cannot pump oppositions around, that is the day we fail. Regular wickets were our undoing, and our batsmen looked incapable of taking apart the England bowling because of solely one reason; an inability to reduce dot balls.
A heave and a miss. A heave straight to the fielder. A heave but mistimed. A heave but lands safe. The mentality is to consume as many deliveries to try and hit a boundary. Scoring shots are not that developed either, and neither is the knowledge of when to take a bowler apart.
It is much better to try and go for a boundary when a bowler enters the spell rather than consume deliveries and then try and end the over well.
When boundaries are scarce, especially in the powerplay, the fielding side will have boundary riders a few meters inside to cut off your supply of easy singles and doubles.
There is no rational captain, who after being slaughtered in the powerplay, would not keep boundary riders to protect boundaries. He would have serious guts to have them patrolling close instead of trying to cut singles/doubles. This is the after-effect of an aggressive approach in the powerplay; it allows your batsmen to come in to have a cushion to get used to the conditions and then play according to their advantage, because you have made the other team play in a cautious, defensive approach.
There is no reason why our batsmen should not be scoring 30-35 runs off of Adil Rashid; granted the pitch is spinning, however, they have faced him enough times to be confident in some strokes against him.
Nobody was willing to try and sweep him, or use their feet to maneuver the ball into gaps. Iftikhar did not move his feet at all in that maiden over; that is just free dot deliveries for a spinner. You need to be able to watch the ball, move around the crease, and play the delivery when it is pitched.
I will wait for the day when a Pakistani batsman can actually get a grip and learn the reverse sweep; it is always executed like they are holding a broom rather than a bat. When you allow a spinner like Rashid to freely bowl at you, it is just going to be your undoing.
However, this post is about the white-ball reset, and that is the last thing I would write about.
Pakistan need to develop actual T20I batsmen; Haris is a good example who did not come off today.
The Babar-Rizwan partnership must be broken.
Fresh blood as a captain is needed in this side.
We need a pace-bowling all-rounder who can actually hold a bat, unlike Wasim. Wasim is a bowler, not an all-rounder, make that very clear moving forward.
For us, since we cannot develop high-quality batsmen, our approach should probably adopt a floater system:
- Have a designated opening pair of aggressive batsmen, Fakhar and Haris (LH-RH) combination.
- Numbers 3 should go to one of Babar or Rizwan. #3 comes in as an accumulator, when the team is off to a poor start, but if they're doing well, he is held back.
- Number 4 should be someone who has a high boundary percentage, may not be consistent but a positive, pro-active cricketer. I would say keep Shadab here, let him go out when the spinners are there for favourable match-ups. If the team is off to a flyer, Shadab comes in ahead of #3, or if a favourable match-up (spinner operating), then also.
- Number 5 needs to be found. Iftikhar is not consistent enough to be someone who comes in and can either soak pressure (in a bad situation) or be ready to fire from the get-go if things are looking difficult. If Haider was developed properly, I'd pick him, but we don't have many options here.
- Number 6 should be Nawaz in my opinion, but he functions as a floater when there is a favourable matchup (like a leg-spinner, or we need a RH-LH combination).
There's also a lot of other things, but this post is rather long and I'm tired as it is.
