Beyond wins and losses, IPL provides a tactical high

By becoming the first batter to be tactically retired out in IPL, Ashwin may have opened the next chapter in T20 evolution

It isn’t a fantasy anymore. Neither is it awkward. If you have a slog-overs specialist batter, there is no point keeping him in the wings and hoping for the innings to fall in place. Ravichandran Ashwin and Rajasthan Royals have finally made it happen: a tactical retired-out. If there is one aspect of the Sunday night game between Royals and Lucknow Super Giants that impressed more than Kuldeep Sen’s phenomenal bowling in the 20th over, it was Ashwin’s decision to retire two balls into the 19th over of Royals’ innings.

Rajasthan Royals' Shimron Hetmyer and Ravichandran Ashwin (Rajasthan Royal Twitter)

Royals could have stuck with Ashwin. Having joined Shimron Hetmyer in the 10th over with the Royals struggling at 67/4, Ashwin scored a 23-ball 28 in a 68-run stand and even hit two sixes before deciding to head back to the dug-out. Hetmyer looked flabbergasted but not Ashwin or the Royals management. It was all part of the plan to unleash Riyan Parag with just 10 balls left in the innings. Parag hit eight in four balls and it was more because of Hetmyer that Royals ended with 165/6 but IPL had finally given us a peek into what the future may look like. The three-run win put that in neat perspective.

Retired outs were always within the law but not until now had IPL witnessed it. There have been international instances of course, Bhutan’s Sonam Tobgay retiring out against Maldives in the 2019 South Asian Games being the first instance. The law states: “A batsman retires out if he retires without the umpire's permission and does not have the permission of the opposing captain to resume his innings. If such a return does not occur, the batman is marked as 'retired out' and this is considered a dismissal for the purposes of calculating a batting average.”

There is a bit of ethical stigma attached to this mode of dismissal but in T20 there is no room for emotional decisions. In an effort to maximise the potential of every ball, no team would want to waste a specialist on the bench. An innovator, always the team man, and someone who doesn’t regret running out the non-striker if he backs up too much, Ashwin was possibly the best man to implement this strategy.

And by being the first team to bite the bullet, Royals may also have essentially led us onto the next phase of T20 evolution, one that is more tactical than ever. No longer are batting orders sacrosanct. Timing is what matters, and from now on more teams may take this road. Such decisions have to be mutual though, and Royals head coach Kumar Sangakkara confirmed that Ashwin and the support staff jointly came to this decision. “It was a combination of both,” Sangakkara said at the post-match press conference. “It was the right time to do that, Ashwin himself was asking from the field as well, and we had discussed it just before that as to what we would do.”

Royals captain Sanju Samson spoke on similar lines. “It's about being Rajasthan Royals. We keep trying different things. We have been talking about it before the season,” Samson said. “We thought that if some situation occurs, we can use it. It was a team decision.” That Royals were in experiment mode batting first was clear in how Sangakkara regretted holding back Parag.

“I think as the coach I got one call wrong, not sending Riyan ahead of Rassie van der Dussen and holding Rassie back, so we couldn’t get the full benefit of Riyan, but I thought the way Ashwin handled that situation, walking in under pressure, the way he batted to support the team, and then finally sacrificed himself in terms of being retired out, was just magnificent, and then he went out in the field and backed it up with an excellent, excellent bowling effort.”

Experimenting with the batting order also took on a different avatar with LSG as they dropped Marcus Stoinis, possibly the best finisher right now, to No 8 after promoting K Gowtham to No 3 and Jason Holder to No 4. While their batting depth allows LSG to be more flexible about approaching chases, in truth they were trying to perfectly time Stoinis’ entry. “Throughout the 20 overs, we kept believing we could win this game,” LSG captain KL Rahul said after the match. “We have depth in our batting, today Stoinis batted at No 8; when you have someone like that with so much power and who is such a destructive batsman... that’s one of the reasons he’s our second retained player.”

Fifteen off six isn’t unattainable by Stonis’ standards. “We believe Stoinis can win us games from any position, we had that belief through and through,” said Rahul. But this was a rare day when Stoinis was stumped by Sen’s unfamiliarity. From Rahul’s point of view, it could have been an easier chase “had we gotten a couple of partnerships going in the early stages.”

That certainly doesn’t mean they won’t try to time Stoinis’ entry again, even if that means demoting him to No 9 next time.