Crucket

New Zealand essentially won the 2nd 20-20 match 22 overs into it, in the 2nd over of the Windies innings. The Windies were never going to catch up without Gayle to lead them, even though 18 more overs had to pass. In contrast, the 1st 20-20 wasn’t over until 10 balls after the end of the 40th over. Good fun that super over. But maybe if the ideal end to a match is a super-over fight out, we should just go straight to it  and fight out over one over.

Actually, I rather enjoyed the two 2 20-20s. I’ve been suspicious that there is too little time during 20 overs to change the direction of an innings. And while this was demonstrated in the second 20-20, the first was much more interesting, as it seemed over right from the start as Ryder struggled with his timing, but showed a definite shift in the last few overs when NZ managed to claw back a game that the Windies seemed to have under firm control.

One thing I am really liking about 20-20 is that it is so different from test cricket. 50-over cricket, as much as a I like the format, feels largely like test cricket shifted up a single gear. League compared to union perhaps. 20-20 however feels like a paradigm shift. A whole different code – 7s maybe. A player’s 20-20 statistics make no sense in test cricket terms. Bowling and batting averages become irreleveant, with all the importance being in Econ and SR. (I’ve been thinking actually that it might be cool to measure economy and strike rates not from 0 but from 1 run/ball, so an SR of 100 and an Econ of 6 become 0, giving Vettori the stats of SR: 16.66, Econ: -0.2.)