Why modern-day batsmen need two techniques

While the notion that 20-over cricket’s exponential growth has created a generation of T20 specialists is hardly new, it is now claimed that young batters aspiring to reach the elite level in all forms of the game will need to possess two contrasting yet co-existing techniques.

Former Australia Test opener Chris Rogers, whose dogged batting style was deemed unsuitable for the T20 game, believes the days of players developing a method of batting and then adapting it to the various formats have now passed.

Instead, Rogers claims that so markedly different are the skills required to succeed with the bat in red-ball and white-ball cricket that anyone looking to reach international in both will be required to bring a distinct, prefabricated method of playing to the respective games.

A defensively sound, highly resilient technique to enable them to succeed in a variety of conditions against all forms of bowling in the Test arena, and then a separate free-wheeling, calculatedly innovative game that will grant them access to the riches offered by limited-overs competitions.

Rogers’ thesis is supported by a new T20 Impact Ratings system created by respected English cricket analyst (and former Middlesex and Durham seamer) Simon Hughes in partnership with the UK’s The Times newspaper and The Cricketer magazine.

In applying his ratings system to players involved in the current World T20 in India and other T20 franchise cricketers around the world, Hughes has devised an algorithm of career statistics that compares batters and bowlers against all opposition, in all conditions and at varying stages of a T20 match.

His resultant rankings of the top three batters and bowlers in the three phases of a 20-over contest – the power play of overs 1-6, the middle overs 7-13 and the ‘death’ overs 14-20 – contains just one player who regularly plays Test matches for his country.

South African Test captain and acknowledged batting freak, AB de Villiers.

But Rogers believes it’s not only in the ultra-short 20-over form of the game that batters are now required to find more than an extra gear or two, with the expectation being they can call upon an entirely fresh way of playing.

The recently retired Test opener, who is in the UK to undertake perhaps his final first-class season with county team Somerset, claims the changes that T20 innovations have also brought to the 50-over game means a new skills set is required to succeed in ODIs as well.

“I think if you want to go to the highest level you’ve got to have another technique now,” Rogers told cricket.com.au.

“The thing I say to young guys these days is that you do probably need to have two techniques, because T20 is so relevant these days and financially it can be amazing as well.

“So you’d be silly not to develop that technique and you can’t have just one technique that goes for both (Test and limited-over) games, you’ve got to have two different techniques.

“Other guys might say otherwise, and fair enough, but I think if you want to be able to have a defence in the longer version you’ve got to shorten your swing for instance.

“Whereas in the one-day game you’ve got to have a long swing to get that power, so you’ve got to develop a different game these days, that’s for sure.”

Despite playing 25 Tests and finishing his Australia domestic career in the top 10 Sheffield Shield and top 35 one-day runs scorers, Rogers did not represent his country in white-ball cricket and played just eight matches across 10 years in the KFC Big Bash League competitions.

He joined a string of regular Australia Test batsmen such as Justin Langer (105 Tests, 8 ODIs), Simon Katich (56 Tests, 45 ODIs), Michael Slater (74 Tests, 42 ODIs) and Greg Blewett (46 Tests, 32 ODIs) ultimately deemed to have one-dimensional techniques not suited to cricket’s abbreviated forms.

“With the (50-over) scores now, it’s 300 plays 300 – I was OK when it was 230, I could keep up,” Rogers said of the rapid recent evolution of the one-day format.

“But you have to get your strike rate up around 100 (runs per 100 balls faced) these days so you have to make things happen.

“And I think Australian selectors will only pick if you can have that kind of fifth and sixth gear in your batting.”

The only Australians to feature on Hughes’s list are current WT20 squad members Glenn Maxwell (ranked second-best batsman in overs 7-13), John Hastings (third-best bowler in opening six overs) and James Faulkner (second-best bowler in death overs 14-20).

Along with South Australia captain Travis Head, who played two T20 Internationals earlier this year and is rated third-best T20 batsman in the middle overs, and uncapped Western Australia quick Jason Behrendorff (currently sidelined with a back injury) who is ranked as the game’s best bowler in first six overs.

Head and Behrendorff are among a group of players to feature in the unofficial new rankings system but who are not involved in the WT20 showpiece.

That list also includes New Zealand opener Hamish Rutherford (ranked behind West Indies’ Chris Gayle as best batters in overs 1-6), veteran former Black Caps off-spinner Jeetan Patel (second-best bowler in overs 7-13 after India’s Harbhajan Singh) and unheralded allrounder Benny Howell.

Born in France to an Australian mother but educated in England, Howell has played grade cricket in Perth and Melbourne (his parents having moved to Australia) but has more recently earned a reputation with Gloucestershire as a useful batter and handy seam bowler.

It’s in the latter role that Hughes has him ranked below Patel as the third-best middle-overs bowler in T20 cricket today.

Gayle is also ranked the best T20 batter in the final six overs of an innings, with England (and Perth Scorchers) allrounder David Willey named top batter in the middle overs while the West Indies’ Dwayne Bravo was ranked best ‘death overs’ bowler ahead of Faulkner and Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga.