NEW ZEALAND TOUR OF INDIA, 2017

Eight8 and a thrill-a-minute experience

by Aayush Puthran • Published on

The game was reduced to eight-overs per side due to heavy rain. © AFP

"I told you, one-hour window is all we need to get the match going," Krishna Prasad, Media Manager of KCA proudly announced. It took 20 less. Within 40 minutes of the five-hour drizzle halting, the umpires inspected the pitch at Green Fields and found it fit forthe game to start.

Cricket-wise, a lot was at stake. Over 40,000 fans had come to witness Thiruvananthapuram's maiden international match. More importantly, yet another India-New Zealand series was hanging on a decider. It could have all been washed away. And thus, every time the ground workers rushed into the ground, armed with buckets and mops, the crowd cheered them on as heroes. Posed with a challenge, through the sub-air system and their groundsmen, Kerala Cricket Association - hosting an international after three years - gave a good account of themselves.

With all the distractions aside and only cricket left to play, the plans had to be altered. And just to complicate matters, plans could've been altered only if they had made one. The covers had been on the pitch ever since the two teams have arrived in the city. With no international cricket having taken place at the venue, there was very little feedback the team managements had received. To make matters worse, the uncertainty over the possibility of the match had left both the teams with very little to work around with.

Kane Williamson, New Zealand skipper, admitted that it was indeed a unique experience to walk into an international match with so little clue about the pitch and the conditions.

Kohli agreed being uncertain about the details of the game can be quite taxing on a player, and added that it ends up testing the 'character of the player'. "It is not easy to plan for such games," he says. "You come to the ground thinking that you have 20 overs to play and then suddenly you chip and change. It's the character of the player as well that counts when they don't know if they are going to play and they end up playing."

However, he believed it didn't deter much of their plans, which needed only a few basic alterations from the previous game. "The good thing is that you don't have to announce the team two hours before the game starts," he explained. "As much as it is delayed, it is only at the toss that you have to give your final XI. You weigh all your options."

It was only after it was confirmed that the match will be an 8-a-side affair, with a minimum of four bowlers bowling did India decide to play an extra batter instead of five frontline bowlers. And in hindsight, the move of bringing in Manish Pandey worked. He got going right from the start and scored 17 off 11 balls - highest in the Indian innings and joint-most in the match.

It was quite an interesting dilemma the teams found themselves in. Even as the game had become shorter, by now, it has been phased into an undescribed form of initial overs, middle overs and death overs in T20 cricket. What's the structure of an 8-a-side game?

If T20 is bang-bang cricket, how do you go about 8-8? Bang-Bang on nitrous mode? Or as Kane Williamson defines it 'T20 cut in half a little bit, couple of less overs as well and you just have to take it home.' Poorly worded, but descriptive much.

He, however, went on to elaborate on the approach his team took while getting into a short contest like this. "When it gets shortened to eight overs, you can sort of plan prior to going out with eight overs. It kind of means that you're not too fluid in how you're going to operate. Whereas in 20 overs you can roll with the punches a little bit and add some flows.

"The guys coming out were essentially playing death in terms of their batting from ball one. It was more to do with the surface and what we wanted to finish with today but it's something different because you don't experience it too much, you get 20 overs each and this is something different, you have to think on your feet."

There was definitely an evident change in approach in all three departments of the game. Batting started on Gear 5, fielders, even at the boundary, showed greater intensity and the bowlers approached their spells like they were bowling two Super Overs each. Suddenly, it was a one and a half package on offer with little time to waste.

As much as the teams adopted the style of going all-out, Williamson doesn't believe in that principle. "Even with eight overs, you don't have to go silly," he says. "You need to play smart cricket because there is still a lot of balls that you need to score off and then you get a couple of boundaries away, it goes a long way to chasing that total down."

The approach may not have worked, and is something that Williamson doesn't adhere to in principle, it surely made for some entertaining viewing. Due to the rains, the pitch was a bit damp and sticky, and the bowlers were freely using the slower deliveries. Wickets and runs were plenty, paving way for thrill-a-minute action. Two outstanding catches only added to the high-intensity show.

Even as it might seem losing a wicket isn't too big a deal if a side of 11 has only eight overs to bat out, it indeed proved to be quite a decisive factor. The primary reason being that there are only a select number of batsmen who can get going from ball one, and if a batsman throws his wicket away after facing a few deliveries, it is only going to waste a few more deliveries on another batsman to get his eye in. As it turned out, as many as 11 wickets fell in 16 overs, and both teams combined to score at a strike rate of around only eight and a half.

As much as batting and bowling needed an alteration, captaincy too came under test. An interesting ploy that Kohli adopted was to bowl off Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who has turned into a dangerous death-bowler, at the start itself. He wanted to keep New Zealand quiet for a bit and push them to go big under pressure towards the end. Low run rate and early wickets ensured the visitors were only playing catch-up.

"We wanted our best bowlers to get done early and leave so many runs in the end they would be left with a lot," Kohli said. "We had the confidence in Hardik, whose off-cutters are good."

It all ended well for Pandya, Kohli and India as the hosts won by six runs. But the question is, would the move have worked had Munro managed to see through Bhuvneshwar's spell? And if not, how much time would've Kohli had to adopt Plan B, if at all there was any? In such a short time, would captains have enough time to take alternate plans through the course of the game?

The shortened game just provided a brief passage of how cricket can look if it is left with even little time to waste, and how exciting it can get if it is as shortened as a football game. For now, Twenty20 has done enough to grip the interest of short-form cricket lovers. But maybe, someday, when three and a half hours would seem too long for cricket, there would be more constructive planning in 90-minute cricket and insight into where the middle overs lie in Eight8.

On Tuesday night, it did provide for some interesting action.

© Cricbuzz

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