It is possible that even as you read this, the first score of 300-plus in an IPL innings might have been made already. Nepal’s 314 for three against Mongolia is the record in a T20International, but franchise cricket is of a higher standard.
Already the 100-mark in the first PowerPlay has been crossed. Six-hitting, the basis of all tall scores, might still be exciting but only just. Repetition is beginning to suck the thrill out of it. As the poet W.H. Auden said, the eye is bored by repetition. In fact, repetition doesn’t create memories.
The IPL is being played for the 17th time, which means there are enough batters who first took to the game when they were in the first grade or so, and have grown with it.
Inevitable
We no longer gasp at 20-plus runs in an over, 24 sixes in an innings or 42 in a match. When Will Jacks takes just 10 deliveries to move from 50 to 100, it is merely interesting, not astounding. Someone, we tell ourselves, was bound to do it sooner or later. The more often such records are broken, the more inevitable it looks; unexpectedness, the essence of competition, is being replaced by inevitability. You can have too much of a good thing.
There aren’t too many angles left unexplored by either batter or bowler. Fielders on the boundary don’t worry the hitter who aims to strike into the crowd. Even the great Jasprit Bumrah has been taken for 18 in a single over. What might cause a sharp intake of breath might actually be a forward defence or a batter letting a ball go through to the wicket keeper unharmed. That might suggest a cosmic disturbance.
Hundreds by Will Jacks (41 balls) and Travis Head (in 39) merely seem to be preparation for a 25-ball century. Traditional statistics have become meaningless. When Delhi Capitals’ Jake Fraser-McGurk made a 27-ball 84 against Mumbai Indians, the significant statistic was not the strike rate of 311, but the fact that of the 104 deliveries he faced, he attempted boundaries off 77. So here’s a new metric: aggressive shot percentage.
Is the end of T20 near?
But does all this lead up to one conclusion: that the end of T20 is approaching faster than predicted? Theoretically, a team could hit each of the 120 deliveries it receives for six, and that would be that.
At the start of the previous century, physicists spoke about the end of physics, as if there was nothing remaining to be discovered. That was just before the quantum revolution and the opening of new pathways. The political philosophers who emphasised the end of history are discovering that they spoke too soon.
Perhaps the approaching death of the T20 is an exaggeration. The future of the format is in the hands of the bowlers. It is likely that batting will peak, reaching a stage beyond which it cannot progress (at least for a while) as the bowlers reassert themselves.
There is too the question of human limit, a question that pops up every Olympic year. If the rule-makers are enlightened, there will be an attempt to create a level playing field even if it means giving the bowler the greater advantage.
Perhaps a batter might be declared leg before even if the ball pitches outside the line of the leg stump. Perhaps the benefit of the doubt will always go in favour of the bowler. Perhaps the two best bowlers might be allowed to bowl six overs each in an innings. All this just for the shortest format of the game, of course. Once it is accepted in theory that bowlers need help, there are always possibilities.
A recent cartoon doing the rounds on social media summed up the bowlers’ plight well. It shows a bunch of bowlers led by Mitchell Starc carrying banners saying things like ‘Stop the Batriarchy’, ‘Bowlers Matter’ and ‘Abolish the Impact Substitute’. Like the best jokes, these reveal important truths.
Bowlers are not supporting acts. As the great Erapalli Prasanna said recently, “You can say all you want about batting, but a match does not begin till someone bowls.”
IPL cricket may be ‘progressing’ too quickly for its own good.
