India’s T20 World Cup 2024 winning ex-head coach Rahul Dravid has supported the calls for bowlers to have some assistance in T20 cricket, as batters have started to dominate so much that the game has become imbalanced.
The grammar of T20 batting has experienced a "complete metamorphosis" in recent years, according to Dravid, who was revealed as the owner of a franchise in the European T20 Premier League, and bowlers now have much "catching up to do."
He cited world No. 1 T20 batsman Abhishek Sharma and young Indian hitters like Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Ayush Mhatre, and Priyansh Arya as instances of how powerplay batting has changed.
“In a sense, to see the quality of batting that has happened over the last two or three years, I think the bowlers in that format of the game will slowly have to do some catching up. I think batsmanship and the ability to hit sixes and to access different parts of the ground have certainly improved leaps and bounds.
Bowlers will have to keep working on their skills and keep developing. I am sure some of them will be able to still stand out and hold their own,” said Dravid to PTI.
Dravid acknowledged that the current balance in T20 cricket is significantly skewed in favor of batters, but he expressed confidence that bowlers will eventually change and react tactically.
“I think if you look at it in terms of balance, probably a lot more batsmen can cope with the requirements of the modern T20 game than, say, some of the bowlers have been able to at this point in time. That may change in two or three years,” he added.
He also spoke about the contrast between T20 cricket and Test cricket, where in the longer format, bowlers have recently dominated proceedings and produced a series of result-oriented matches.
“I mean, if you look at Test cricket today, nearly every Test match produces a result. So, I think bowlers are probably holding sway in some of the Test matches that we are seeing. You know, two-day matches, three-day matches. So, bowlers have started holding sway in Test cricket. So, it will be interesting to see over the next couple of years if bowlers are able to pull this back a little bit in T20s,” Dravid said.
The former India coach did concede, though, that in order to restore balance in the shortest format, bowlers in T20 cricket could need support from the playing conditions.
“They may need a little bit of support, and I think the way is probably to have a little more challenging wickets to ensure that there is something in it for the bowlers, whether it is the tracks that turn or whether it is a little bit more pace and bounce that gives the bowlers a little bit more of a chance. Because I don't think we can increase the size of the boundaries, and already there is no space to go and increase the size of the boundaries,” Dravid said.
Dravid was also asked whether two bouncers in an over could help bowlers regain some control; he avoided advocating for certain rules.
“I mean, I think anything that might make it a little bit more gives the bowlers a little bit more of a chance. But I still think that in the next couple of years, we may see bowlers bounce back a little bit and start getting a little bit more of a swing. There is always this balance, and there are times when the bat holds the sway as we are seeing at the moment in white-ball cricket, and maybe in red-ball cricket, we are seeing the ball hold the sway a little bit,” Dravid added.
Dravid signed off by stressing that cricket should never become overly dominated by either batters or bowlers.
“I think at some stage we don't want the balance to be too skewed either way, either on the side of the batsmen or the side of the bowlers,” he said.
(PTI inputs)
