One-day win tinged with T20 feeling

While fears that T20 cricket will ultimately cannibalise its more established, less glitzy forebear remain as yet unproved, it is beyond question that the 50-over game now resides in the shadow of its precocious younger sibling.

A vital, meaningful encounter between long-time rivals in its own right, today’s ODI between New Zealand and Australia that levelled the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy was also played out against the backdrop of the Indian Premier League’s lavish player auction.

Quick Single: Watson, Marsh earn massive pay day in IPL auction

Nobody seriously suspects their failure to attract a bidder in the opening round of the IPL horse trading contributed to George Bailey’s first-ball duck or Martin Guptill’s uncharacteristically ponderous 31 from 45 balls.

Or that there anything other than a will to win that drove Mitchell Marsh and John Hastings – both recipients of windfalls an hour or so earlier – to their record (against NZ) unbeaten seventh-wicket stand of 86 that saved Australia’s blushes and sent the series to Monday’s decider in Hamilton.

But for the sums of money being flung about for a competition that houses friend alongside foe and pits franchise against franchise, it would have been impossible for those looking to pocket a crore or two in the IPL not to have at least half an ear on events in Bangalore while playing in Wellington.

Most of 22,107 fans who rode the rollercoaster of fortunes at Westpac Stadium could not have given a flying feijoa about the further riches being showered on those in the middle once they were no longer representing their countries.

However, the game they were watching and cheering clearly betrayed the character of a T20 derivative. 

WATCH: Henry finds himself on a hat-trick

It is almost 11 years since the very first T20 international was staged on the same north island of New Zealand that hosted today’s game.

And although few of those who took part in that Eden Park pantomime – among them current IPL supremos Ricky Ponting and Stephen Fleming - believed it would ever be more than an ad-hoc adjunct to the game, in barely a decade it has come to tinge everything.

Including the manner in which 50-over cricket is played.

The 9-281 scored by the Black Caps scored from their overs, a total reached thanks largely to the clean late-order hitting of numbers eight Mitchell Santner (45no from 39 balls) and nine Adam Milne (36 from 27) that was in itself unheard of in earlier eras, would once have meant almost certain victory.

Prior to that historic T20 at Auckland in 2005 that saw players sporting retro costumes and silly hair, there had been just 40 ODI matches played across three decades in which teams had chased down a score of that size or more (not including rain-affected matches with revised targets).

And more than half of those came in the 21^st Century, by which time the size of bats were on the increase and the dimensions of playing fields headed unremittingly in the other direction.

Since the birth of T20 at international level and its adoption by all – including the game’s giant India, which initially refused to be involved in the 20-over format because of its deep affection for ODIs – it’s happened in 80 matches.

More than a dozen times since the start of last year’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, and on 10 of those occasions teams that have scored 300 or more batting first have been over-run.

In short, the domination and innovation that batters have been able to refine in the 20-over arena means the old ODI truism as to hard currency of ‘runs on the board’ now looks as tired and quaint as that grainy footage of one-day internationals featuring players clad in cricket whites.

As was shown this evening when another foundation pillar of ODI history heaved under the weight of second-innings runs.

Only once before – at Napier in 2006, when Sri Lanka chased down NZ’s 285 with 10 overs to spare on the back of a blistering Sanath Jayasuriya century – had the Black Caps scored as many as they did today and ended up on the losing side.

But that historic superiority was not reflected in the probability algorithms that showed once NZ skipper Brendon McCullum’s belligerent start to his country’s national (Waitangi) day had been quelled, the visitors remained an even-money chance of winning.

Contrary to the patriotic crowd’s prevailing view. 

WATCH: Zampa's two wickets on debut

Certainly when Australia’s openers David Warner and Usman Khawaja cruised to a stand of 50 inside six overs, the obstacle of 281 that would have appeared all-but insurmountable in epochs past of 281 loomed small.

At the rate the pair was motoring in that first half hour, Australia would reach the target and square the series before the final drinks break.

And unlike McCullum, who charged and swung his way to 28 from a dozen deliveries as if his time as an international player was fast running out, Australia’s new opening combination achieved even more substantial better results by employing recognisable cricket shots.

None better than the genuine cut that Warner aimed against Trent Boult, the world’s top-ranked ODI bowler, that scorched to the boundary like a short-range missile, landing pin-point at its destination – the far side of the boundary rope.

Having scampered and retrieved along the straight boundaries like a Jack Russell terrier pursuing a tennis ball along a beach during his team’s fielding innings, Warner notionally started his knock at least 20 runs in the positive.

Although that won’t be reflected in his career milestones, given he was dismissed two runs shy of what would have been a deserved century given the steel he infused into an occasionally brittle Australian batting effort. 

WATCH: Wonderful Warner sets strong platform

Those lapses meant a chase that appeared perfectly placed and just as sweetly paced while Warner and Khawaja were finding gaps and occasionally clearing boundaries suddenly became a tad daunting.

And a pursuit that seemed all-too-straightforward in this age of T20 batters’ mentality when no asking total is too large, and no risk too great to accept, became a backs-to-the-wall struggle.

Because it was when the T20 arsenal was unveiled by some of those in the top and middle-order – the cross-bat heaves, the open-faced glides behind the wicket – that Australia lost wickets in clumps while having plenty overs in reserve.

It was only when Marsh and Hastings knuckled down, accepted it was going to be clever rather than crash-bang cricket that got their team home and got the job done that the enduring difference between 50-over and T20 cricket became evident.

How long that remains is a question for another Waitangi Day.