When T20 cricket makes sense it will lose much of what it has given to the wider game.
Telford Vice | Cape Town
T20 cricket and sobering thoughts aren’t often connected, but here goes nothing: South Africa mounted a rousing fightback to level the ODI series last Saturday only to crash and burn in the decider three days later. They might want that nugget of reality rattling around their heads at the Premadasa on Sunday, when they will try to clinch the T20I rubber with a game to spare.
The lesson is to take your chances when they present themselves. That’s not meant as a joke on the Sri Lankans, but they might feel the sting of a punchline nonetheless — South Africa dropped five catches in the first T20I on Friday, and still won.
Of course, let’s not expect T20 cricket to make sense. When it does — and sadly, one day, it will — it can only lose much of what it has given to the wider game. And not just on the field.
Similarly to what it says in paragraph one above, cricket writers and cricketers aren’t easily connected in the imagination. But the mad tempo of a T20 easily permeates the pressbox windows. Or, in these pandemic days, the television screen that serves as many formerly travelling writers’ sole visual tether to the game.
If you’re covering a Test you have most of three sessions — each of them two-thirds as long as an entire T20 — to organise your thoughts and present something you hope is cogent, insightful and not a rehash of what your readers have already seen on television or analysed for themselves online. You’re more rushed reporting on an ODI, but the same principles apply and it’s rare that the narrative of a match is pulled out of shape late in the game.
Covering a T20 is nothing like that. Simply, you latch, early in the action, onto a notion strong enough to survive every diabolical twist that can and will be thrown in your idea’s path and write the hell out of it fast enough to get the damned thing out of your life moments after you have chucked in a quote or two from the post-match press conferences. Then you blink and wonder what, exactly, just happened. In truth, it’s great fun.
Players surely have something like that experience of T20s, albeit exponentially more physically. Friday’s match was a good example, with South Africa’s batters building a stable but slow base for the flurry that followed. The Lankans struggled to stay in touch with the required runrate, but weren’t a long way off competing. Doubtless when all concerned, umpires and all, returned to their hotel rooms, some turned on the television to watch the highlights and find out what, exactly, had just happened.
How much could change between Friday and Sunday, considering the conditions are likely to be well nigh identical and the personnel not much less so? In a word, everything. Remember that the world’s top two bowlers in the format, Tabraiz Shamsi and Wanindu Hasaranga, are in opposing dressing rooms. And that they went for a combined 7.12 runs to the over on Friday. Also that the only batter in the series among the leading 10 in the rankings, Rassie van der Dussen, missed the first match with a hamstring strain. If you wanted to write a haiku on the febrile nature of T20 cricket, you could do it with those facts alone.
For South Africa, victory on Sunday would seal their third consecutive series success in the format — a run that started impressively when they prevailed over West Indies, the reigning T20I champions, in the Caribbean in July. But they know there is plenty about their game they need to fix if they are to mix it with stronger teams at the coming World Cup in the format.
For Sri Lanka, winning would suggest their performance in the ODIs was not an aberration: they have come out on top in only two of the dozen white-ball series they have played since the 2019 ODI World Cup. Happiness for the home side on Sunday would also keep them alive in this rubber; no small thing considering they will have to qualify for the second round of the T20 World Cup.
It’s been a rough and raw time for both teams, who have been bruised and battered on and off the field. So there are those among their compatriots who will rejoice if they lose on Sunday. Because nothing fuels a noisy agenda as efficiently as failure. That’s two sobering thoughts in one piece ostensibly about T20 cricket. Enough.
When: Sunday September 12, 2021. 7pm Local Time
Where: R. Premadasa Stadium, Colombo
What to expect: Something like Friday’s surface; slowish but willing with a touch of turn.
Team news
Sri Lanka: Including the first two ODIs, Bhanuka Rajapaksa has a hattrick of ducks against South Africa. Friday’s was a first-baller. Minod Bhanuka didn’t do much better in the ODIs, scoring 34 runs in two innings. But he should come in for Rajapaksa.
Possible XI: Avishka Fernando, Dinesh Chandimal, Minod Bhanuka, Dhananjaya de Silva, Charith Asalanka, Dasun Shanaka, Wanindu Hasaranga, Chamika Karunaratne, Dushmantha Chameera, Maheesh Theekshana, Akila Dananjaya
South Africa: Rassie van der Dussen missed Friday’s game with a hamstring problem, but even if he’s fit it’s difficult to find a credible reason to make changes.
Possible XI: Quinton de Kock, Reeza Hendricks, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Dwaine Pretorius, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Bjorn Fortuin, Anrich Nortjé, Tabraiz Shamsi
What they said
“We’ve got an abundance of spinners nowadays compared to five, six years ago when spinners were more likely to be pushed aside because of the fast bowling mentality.” — Keshav Maharaj on South Africa’s evolving philosophy.
First published by Cricbuzz.
Bulletproof Truth 