Don't they say in T20 cricket, strike rate matters more than average? With 75 needed off the last five overs for Gujarat Titans to chase down 197 at a Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur sans any dew, experts and many Rajasthan Royals fans would have been hoping for a five out of five win-loss record for the men in pink.
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Shubman Gill
had just been dismissed for a well-made 72 off 44 balls and the Titans only had allrounders in the shed.
But those allrounders were all players that could hit the ball and score at a strike-rate of 150-plus. What did you get from them?
Rahul Tewatia
22 (11), SR 200; Shahrukh Khan 14 (8), SR 175 and
Rashid Khan
24 (11), SR 218.18.
Energetic knocks and impactful ones despite being light on the volume of runs. How quickly, rather than how many seems to be the question that matters to batters and teams now in the shortest format.
One witnessed that at the Wankhede too on Sunday as Mumbai Indians scored 234 off their 20 overs against Delhi Capitals without a batter getting to 50. No batter faced more than 33 balls in that innings.
Compare that to the RR vs RCB game in Jaipur where RCB batters
Virat Kohli
and Faf Du Plessis consumed 105 balls between them out of the available 120 leaving little for hitters like
Glenn Maxwell
, Cameron Green and
Dinesh Karthik
to have an impact.
Do we, in T20 cricket, overestimate the value of a set batter continuing in the final stages of an innings when there could be more valuable hitting resources in the dugout?
The question becomes even more relevant when teams are batting first and are erring on the side of caution. With the teams having the luxury of an extra batter because of the impact sub rule, caution or conservatism could be an abused word in a tournament where 200 is fast becoming a par score rather than a safe one.
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