A half-strength England team going down to Australia on a bitterly cold night at Hampshire’s Utilita Bowl: this was not a T20 international which will live long in the memory. Travis Head, the game’s top-scorer, was dismissed inside the powerplay. No batter faced as many as 30 balls, while Liam Livingstone and Sean Abbott were the only bowlers to take three wickets.
Yet it was a night that taught us something about T20 cricket and its evolution, as the format enters its third decade at the professional level. The two teams selected were remarkable: 21 of the 22 players selected could either bowl or keep wicket, with England’s Jamie Overton – an allrounder picked as a specialist batter due to a back injury – the only exception.
There were 13 bowlers used – seven by England, six by Australia – and all 22 players batted, with both sides bowled out for the first time in a men’s T20 international in England. It was not a game which required much of an attention span: on average, there was a boundary every over (one per 5.7 balls) and a wicket every second over (one per 11.7 balls).
Is this T20’s future? The trend across the format’s history has been that runs have been scored and wickets have been taken at a faster rate with every passing year. With most teams preaching a homogenous message about their approach – giving batters freedom to attack, and prioritising wickets over economy with the ball – there is no obvious sign of that changing soon.
The proliferation of multi-skilled players on display reflected the pattern. If wickets fall more regularly, there is greater expectation that lower-order players should be able to bat; and if top-order batters are facing a smaller proportion of balls, they need to find another way to contribute, whether that it is with the ball, gloves or in the outfield.
“It’s been a real trend of all T20 teams over the last little period of time,” Mitchell Marsh, Australia’s captain, said. “The more options you can have from a bowling perspective, as a captain and as a team, is really beneficial, bouncing in and out of different bowling options. The more we can develop our young allrounders, that better that will be for us.”
Marcus Trescothick, England’s interim coach, believes that national teams simply “go through phases” when they have an abundance of allrounders. “It’s really beneficial when you get groups that have seven or eight people who could bowl, and you’ve got a side who can bat all the way down to No. 10 or 11, that’s when you’re blessed – but that’s not always the case.”
But it looks like a permanent shift in England’s case, with the vast majority of players in their pathway now multi-skilled. Take Wednesday night’s other debutants: Jacob Bethell describes himself as a batting allrounder, while Jordan Cox is England’s nearest equivalent to Glenn Phillips: an occasional wicketkeeper and an electric outfielder, he has even started to dabble with part-time spin. Will Smeed, another highly-talented T20 hitter who retired from first-class cricket at 21, has ambitions to improve his own offbreaks to give himself another string to his bow.
England’s swathe of allrounders in this series owes in part to circumstance. Harry Brook, who has not bowled a ball in his 54 limited-overs internationals, is recuperating after their Test series against Sri Lanka; so too is Ben Duckett, who has only kept wicket once in the last three years. On Wednesday, they looked at least one batter light, with Jofra Archer at No. 8.
But the fact that so many players have a secondary skill is a clear reflection of market forces during this franchise boom. Among the overseas players in this year’s IPL, Rajasthan Royals’ Shimron Hetmyer was the best-paid specialist batter; including batters who bowl and wicketkeepers, there were nine overseas allrounders who earned more.
The trend is particularly heightened in England and Australia, where players compete for contracts in foreign leagues during their lengthy off-seasons. Having a secondary skill which an agent can push to franchises can be the difference between a well-paid deal to play T20 overseas, and a winter training in the indoor school.
The main counterpoint to this trend comes from the format’s world champions. India have often struggled to balance their T20 side: not many of their bowlers contribute with the bat, and vice versa. The introduction of the Impact Player rule in the IPL – which allows teams to pick an extra specialist for each innings – is widely thought to have exacerbated that.
And yet, India’s victory over South Africa in June might come to be seen as the end of that era. Only three of their players that day neither bowl regularly nor keep wicket: two of them, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, immediately retired from T20Is; the third, Suryakumar Yadav, took his first T20I wickets in July, taking a game against Sri Lanka into an improbable Super Over.
If Wednesday night’s match in Southampton highlighted the abundance of secondary skills among modern players, it was also a reminder that T20 is at its best when specialists thrive.
The decisive moment in England’s chase came when Josh Hazlewood – who has scored 29 runs in 52 T20Is – bowled Liam Livingstone an 85mph/137kph ball which he disguised as a slower ball, briefly showing Livingstone the back of his hand on release. It was a moment of ingenuity which underlined that for all the importance of allrounders, quality always wins out.
