Column: Buttler’s boys redefining T20 cricket

Jos Buttler and co lifted the T20 World Cup on Sunday after beating Pakistan in the grand finale that came to an end at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia.

England was always seen as one of the favorites to win the tournament alongside a couple of other nations such as India and Australia.

Despite that embarrassing and perhaps slightly unlucky defeat to Ireland, England managed to peak at the right time.

When the T20 was first introduced nearly a couple of decades ago, the need for power-hitting was highlighted, but many teams including England were confused as to how they should approach it and which players they should select for the shortest format. For instance, England’s first even captain was Michael Vaughn who batted at 5 in the first T20 and then they had Andrew Strauss batting at 7.

However, since then they have come a long way and become one of the most organised cricketing nations in the world.

No other team in the world has approached the limited over game as well as they have done and the results in the previous 50 overs and T20 World Cups clearly explain why.

Most of the subcontinent teams including Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and even Bangladesh have opted for the safe option in the batting power-play. In the crunch games the subcontinent openers have opted for slow starts trying to keep wickets in hand in an attempt to capitalize in the latter stages of the game, but this plan didn’t quite work out due to few reasons.

Obviously the grounds in Australia are much bigger so clearing the boundaries was a tough task and the pitches wouldn’t stay true throughout the innings unlike the flat wickets in subcontinent.

So, Butter and co had realized the importance of the power-play andthey went out all guns blazing.

Especially, in that semi-final against India, they completely shocked the opponents showing no respect for the bowlers. If one gets out the next one would come and approach the bowling same way and their batting is so deep that they had Adil Rashid batting at number 11 – a man with ten first class centuries and 37 fifties.

They were able to use the all rounders to a great effect with Sam Curran finishing the tournament with the award of man of the series. All other teams have all rounders but in Curran they found a death bowling specialist – all these only come from really good planning and thinking and perhaps this is something Sri Lanka must work on.

Sri Lanka’s performances were not that bad as people make it look like. They are the champions of Asia and they have made huge progress under the captaincy of Dasun Shanaka but from making progress to winning World Cup requires more work.