April 2, 2016
What's worked in this World T20?
JARROD KIMBER
Yorkers made a comeback, pure batsmen largely trumped hitters, and the myth of the par score was busted 6 shares
Batsmen like Kane Williamson were successful in this World T20 even when the ball didn't come on to the bat © AFP
Cricket is a simple game. Of course, unlike other simple games like American football, cricket couldn't even attempt a playbook of its tactics. If it had, that playbook would have been switch-hit out of relevance a few years ago. Now it would need to be updated minute by minute by a team of analysts and be too long to read without correct meta-tagging.
Coming into the tournament it was thought that the yorker was not the ball it used to be. And that's right. Ryan Campbell decided years ago, after hearing in bowling meetings about constant yorkers, that flicking the ball over his head while batting was a good way to go. Douglas Marillier and Tillakaratne Dilshan probably had the same thoughts when they started playing their shots. If the ball is full and straight, you find new ways to score off it.
Then there is the development of bats and batsmen. Bats used to have a high, small middle. Bats now have a lower larger middle. That is why shots like the helicopter exist.
Then there is range-hitting, which Lance Klusener was perhaps the first to bring into international cricket. Batsmen now practise having no fear, they know how far they can hit the ball, and it's a long way. And batsmen are stronger, they can muscle the ball now. Remember the time when a team sent in a big broad-shouldered bowler when they wanted a few sixes quickly hit? Pat Symcox, Craig McDermott, strong men with no fear. Now batsmen are the brawny ones. Chris Gayle, Corey Anderson, Johnson Charles and Brendon McCullum are the muscle men.
Much of cricket lore is from ex-players, and ex-players have often stopped evolving. They have their theories, they aren't changing. But the game does. Joel Garner would be a great bowler now, as he was then, but his yorker wouldn't be the thunderbolt sent down from the clouds that you couldn't play. It would still be a great ball, but the batsmen would be down the wicket, turning it into a low full toss. They would be back in their crease facing a half-volley. They would muscle it to the boundary with their big bats and big biceps, and they would flick it over their head.
But this World T20 has been different. The incredible slowness of so many pitches, and the even slower nature of the bowlers and their cutters, has meant that the ramps and scoops are not as useful. So the yorker has had a renaissance, and it was that ball that England used against New Zealand. It was that ball that took them to the final of this tournament.
In many ways England v West Indies is a contest between a team of McCullum devotees and a team of Chris Gayles, the believers of BMac v universe-bossing
www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/994259.html 
