On JioStar, the host broadcasters for the Twenty20 World Cup, India’s matches against the associate nations are being advertised with a simple question: “Will India be the first team to break the 300-run mark in the T20 World Cup?”
Ostensibly, the question is fair, even if the wording ignores that three countries – Zimbabwe, Nepal, and England (against South Africa in September) have previously topped 300 in T20 internationals. India hit 271 for five in their last T20 before the World Cup, against New Zealand, scoring at 12.35 an over during the series – the equivalent of an average of 247 runs in a full 20-over innings. Namibia and Netherlands pose less challenging attacks than New Zealand.
And yet many predicted that India would have already amassed 300: in their opening T20 World Cup clash, when they batted first against the United States in Mumbai. Instead, India stumbled to 161 for nine: enough to register a comfortable win, but a world away from the heights promised by the JioStar advert. Not until the seventh game of the T20 World Cup did any team reach 200, as Scotland did in their victory over Italy.
George Munsey reverse slog sweep
George Munsey’s 84 drove Scotland above 200 in their victory over Italy, the only such total in the first eight matches — Bikas Das/AP
The opening skirmishes of the tournament have added to a recurring trend in T20: in international tournaments, scores come down. In all T20 matches since 2020, the average run rate is 7.95, which soars to 8.87 in the Indian Premier League. But in T20 World Cups in the same period, the average run rate is a modest 7.37, equating to an average score of 147 in 20 overs.
The IPL and the T20 World Cup are tantamount to different sports, so different is the equilibrium between bat and ball. In 317 completed matches in the history of the T20 World Cup, as of the end of the weekend, only 19 innings reached 200, a rate of once every 16.7 matches. But in 74 matches in the last Indian Premier League season, 52 teams reached 200, a rate of once every 1.4 matches.
Ben Stokes celebrates victory
Ben Stokes batted England to victory in the 2022 T20 World Cup final, a tournament in which 200 was breached only twice — Getty Images/Martin Keep
The difference reflects how matches are literally played by different rules. Since 2023, IPL teams have been allowed to substitute one player during a game, which sides have used as a tool to play an extra batsman, thereby extending their batting orders and encouraging the top order to hit with more abandon. The average scoring rate has been 9.38 since the rule was introduced.
Even when they play on the same grounds as in the IPL, teams in India have been playing on different pitches. The International Cricket Council oversees the pitch curation for tournaments, and has again shown its inclination to ensure wickets offer bowlers some assistance. This trend was praised by Ravichandran Ashwin, India’s former spinner.
“From the moment this ICC T20 World Cup started, everyone expected it to be a high-scoring tournament,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel. “Those expectations have been broken already. We must credit the ICC for the kind of wickets they’ve prepared.”
Against the US, Ashwin noted: “India expected a usual Wankhede Stadium type pitch, but what we got was completely different and quite surprising.” Speaking after England’s match in Mumbai, Will Jacks also noted how, with less batsman-friendly wickets than in the franchise game, “We’re going to have to be really adaptable”. The challenge for batsmen will only intensify as the tournament advances, and more games are played on used pitches, which tend to be slower.
Will Jacks' lofted drive for six
Will Jacks’ 18-ball 39 proved the difference between England and Nepal in Mumbai but the all-rounder said the pitch forced him to be more adaptable than when playing in the IPL — Rafiq Maqbool/AP
While the pitches become harder for batsmen in T20 World Cups, so do the bowlers that batsmen face. Bilateral T20 matches are, almost universally, low-stakes affairs, akin to glorified friendlies. They are an opportune moment to rest leading bowlers, to keep them fresh for Test matches and white-ball global events. Batsmen, whose art is less physically demanding than bowling fast, simply have less need to be rested from bilaterals, and can feast on weaker opponents in these games.
All players face more pressure in global events, of course. Yet the pressure affects different types of players in different ways.
Under stress, the natural human tendency is to retreat and be more cautious and risk-averse. In T20, the default approach for most bowlers is to be defensive; when the stakes increase, they might feel greater tension but no inclination to change their default method. But for batsmen, the default is to be attacking in T20; under pressure, they can rein themselves in. The inclination is understandable: a dismissal that looks reckless – being caught in the deep during the middle overs, say – will be swiftly overlooked in a bilateral, but linger for years in a World Cup knockout match.
In the ODI World Cup, chasing teams fare worse than in normal ODIs, as the book Hitting Against The Spin explores, suggesting that pressure particularly affects batsmen in crunch games. The same trend is also detectable in T20 cricket. Across all T20s, chasing teams win 51.7 per cent of matches, a small but durable advantage. Yet in the history of the T20 World Cup, chasing teams have won two fewer games than they have lost.
As England could attest, pressure extends to playing less-heralded sides, too. While the 300 figure might yet fall against weaker associates – Canada and the UAE, who did not play on the opening weekend, are considered the most vulnerable pair – emerging teams are vindicating the decision to expand the T20 World Cup to 20 nations, from the 2024 edition.
The expansion has given the World Cup a far more global feel. There are, perhaps, encouraging comparisons with the world’s most popular game. The growth in the number of teams in the football World Cup didn’t lead to a surge in thrashings, because the overall quality deepened. The biggest winning margin in a World Cup fixture remains Yugoslavia’s 9-0 victory over Zaire in 1974, when the tournament comprised only 16 teams, compared with 48 this year.
The weeks ahead in India and Sri Lanka will certainly witness ample big-hitting; JioStar’s advert might yet come to seem a prophecy. But if you want to see a team threaten 300 in a T20 match, then best to watch fixtures with fewer consequences than the World Cup.
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