If you were to wager on the Super-12 lineup of the T20 World Cup a month ago, would you have kept West Indies out of it? Probably not. It’s happening though. Two-time champions and the most belligerent innovators in this format, West Indies are flying back on Saturday. It triggers an existential question: Is T20 cricket’s most unpredictable representation? Check the two groups in the first round and you will find each team has won at least one match. But
If you were to wager on the Super-12 lineup of the T20 World Cup a month ago, would you have kept West Indies out of it? Probably not. It’s happening though. Two-time champions and the most belligerent innovators in this format, West Indies are flying back on Saturday. It triggers an existential question: Is T20 cricket’s most unpredictable representation? Check the two groups in the first round and you will find each team has won at least one match. But if you ask Namibia—who beat Sri Lanka—to replicate this performance in ODIs, it would possibly be a bit too much to ask for. That is what T20 has done to cricket—it has redefined the margins of comfort by compressing the game into a format even a greenhorn team would be comfortable in.
It is in this background that we have another T20 World Cup, the second in 12 months, under the shadow of a growing weather depression in a different continent, in another hemisphere. But there aren’t any outright favourites. Had there been any logic to T20 performance, India would have been by now the equivalent of the Galacticos at the World Cup because they have the best franchise league. Australia, the best World Cup team in the ODI version, wouldn’t have had to wait till the seventh edition to put their name on the trophy. England, too, are confusing, chasing down 350+ Test targets with a devil-may-care attitude but failing to infuse that spirit in the shortest format.
T20 is a difficult game to grasp because it exists in different tournament forms with separate rules and an ever-evolving set of matchups and data trying to predict the next ball. It’s impossible to grasp but teams are still trying. And then you counter the imperceptible factors. Like how Australia are exceptional at home, especially in multi-team tournaments. Their white-ball record is 21-2, easily better than India. An even better example is how New Zealand—who have made the last three finals of the World Cup (T20 and ODI)—not beaten Australia in Australia in any form of the game for over a decade.
It’s difficult to explain lows like these, which is why New Zealand captain Kane Williamson was non-committal when asked about it on Friday. "We haven't thought too much about that," he said. "They know the conditions well. They're very clinical at home and in most places that they play, which is a reflection of where they stand in the game. So there is that respect. We know that we have a number of match-winners throughout. We've had a number of good clashes (with Australia) over the years and a number of good series as well, and I guess most recently probably the last World Cup."
Truth is, it isn’t really about the teams per se that results are hinging on nowadays in T20. “In T20 cricket, you need a bit of luck as well, and what we learnt from the last World Cup was, if the team's got real good relief, that that goes a long way, and it rubs off on each other,” said Australia captain Aaron Finch. But it essentially boils down to being more adaptive. “There are some guys who are serious power hitters who don't take any boundary into consideration because they know, if they get it out of the middle, it's going to go for six anyway,” explained Finch. “It's probably the guys through middle order who, when you're playing in places like England where the grounds are a bit smaller, the subcontinent, where they're small and fast, that you can get away with a flier early in the innings.
There's still a couple of places you can do that here in Australia. There's going to be one short-side tomorrow, 63 meters, and 72 the other side. The Gabba, you can get away with a bit of a flier because it's so open and you get a bit of pace on the ball. So there's still places where all game styles will be effective. I think that's what makes T20 a great game. There's so much strategy, but the fundamentals are still there.”
Fundamentals like Josh Hazlewood choking the life out of an innings with his Test lengths. Or Virat Kohli winding down a chase with singles, twos and carefully threaded boundaries. Equally relevant at the same time are Glen Maxwell’s switch hits or Harshal Patel’s slower deliveries. There may not be one way to play T20 cricket anymore. And that just makes this World Cup more open. “I think there's a lot of different ways you can play cricket in Australia, and that's the beauty of it,” said Finch. “You get such varied conditions from the east to the west, even north in Brisbane to the south down in Melbourne or Hobart. I think there's so many variables that come into it, that the team that wins the competition will be a really well rounded team and a team that can adapt quicker to changing conditions all the time.”
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