The power play, for example, has been almost completely redefined. Earlier, with a hard ball and a flat deck, it was a licence to the openers to go for it. With little in the air and nothing from the surface, and only two fielders outside the 30-yard circle, the new-ball bowlers had very little to play with. But the world has a way of turning things around and the bowlers are now the beneficiaries of the stand-off between the government and the IPL! Help comes from unlikely sources sometimes!

It isn’t as if the pitches are rock hard and adding momentum to the ball. In fact sometimes they cause the ball to stop a bit, lose pace but nip around off the seam. As a result the old philosophy of sight the ball once and hit through the line isn’t exactly working. You might argue that Gilchrist and Gibbs and Jayasuriya and Tendulkar are still doing quite well but the answer to that might lie beyond the surface and in their pedigree. Young Indian openers are discovering that there is a world beyond and their education hasn’t yet taken them there. Good strikers of the ball like Swapnil Asnodkar, Karan Goel and even Shreevats Goswami in the early part of a fine innings against the Knight Riders looked uncomfortable with the ball gaining height on them.

That is what these surfaces have done; even if they haven’t added zip to the ball, they have provided bounce and adjusting to slightly slower bounce is probably more difficult than when the ball comes on. That is also why bowlers who are naturally quick through the air, not just Lasith Malinga and Fidel Edwards who have been outstanding, but others like Dirk Nannes and Ishant Sharma, have enjoyed themselves.

Laboured run-making

The ball that stops a bit also means that the spinners have a role to play and so run-making has been a bit laboured at times. Laboured in the context of T20 that is, because seven an over is fairly rapid anywhere else. Teams have started believing that they need to keep the new ball out (respecting the bowlers was never thought possible in this format!), keep wickets in hand and go for the runs later. That is interesting because the word “later” itself didn’t exist last year!! And so T20 is looking a bit like the old-fashioned one-day games where 230 was a good score on almost any surface. 140 in T20 is a bit like 230 in a fifty-over game and I think we need a little more. Just as 260-270 probably provides the most interesting one-day game, 160-170 is probably the ideal T20 score.

One way of getting there could well be the use of pinch hitters. Someone who ordinarily bats at number eight and can go at a strike rate of 180-200 and doesn’t hang around. It will provide momentum at little cost and I won’t be surprised at all if more teams follow what the Mumbai Indians did with Harbhajan Singh against the Knight Riders.

The strategic time-out has become another variable. There are some statistics that show that in 80% of innings a wicket is lost in overs 11 and 12. After that happened a few times, teams started playing cautiously and that meant it was playing on their minds. It is worth arguing that another variable does the game no harm, especially if it applies equally to both sides but the key is what the players and the viewers think. If it affects playing and viewing pleasure then maybe it will be a short-lived addition.