South Australian Redbacks thrashed Royal Challengers Bangalore by 8 wickets at Kings mead on 17th September 2010 in a Champions League T20 league encounter and though the match was one sided in the sense South Australia chased comfortably and won with one and a half overs to spare there were big positives from the match for followers of T20 format of the game.
To begin with Royal Challengers Bangalore were never in the game after being 5 for 76 after 10.5 overs but still they managed to get 154 in 19.5 overs at 7.76 runs an over. Had it not been for a flurry of wickets in the final overs Royal Challengers Bangalore would have even surpassed 160 plus and may be could have come close to 170 which is a competitive total on any day at any ground. While credit should be given for Ross Taylor's counter attacking innings of 46 of 28 deliveries early in the innings when RCB lost two early wickets with just 7 runs on the board and Du Preez 22 ball 46 when they lost half of their side with hardly anything on the board, the real credit should go to the men who devised the T20 format of the game.
If one were to assume that Ross Taylor was playing a 50 over game he would not have played the type of innings he played yesterday as he would have been under pressure to curb his natural instincts so as to rebuild the innings. Similary Du Preez would have been under pressure to last the duration of 50 overs than go for expansive shots and the ultimate result would be boredom for viewers and a modest target to chase for the team batting second. What the T20 format of the game has done is that it has removed the pressure on batsman to rebuild the innings. In T 20 format batsman know that even if they get out early playing shots there would not be as much pressure on the batsman to follow as they just need to bat out a few deliveries to set a challenging score. That is exactly what Taylor and Du Preez did as they aggregated 92 runs between them in just 50 deliveries and even the rest failed they still put up a total which was defendable had their bowlers been competent enough.
While it was always good to see fiery spell of fast bowling in one dayers especially very early in the innings which set up matches it had its repercussions too as batsman literally stonewalled in the process of rebuilding the innings and that really drove away the viewers from cricket grounds and television sets. Now with number of overs being restricted the batsman can play shots at any point of time during the innings and the frequency at which they get the big shots proves decisive in the final analysis. Even Though Royal Challengers Bangalore could not last the full quota of their overs, they still managed to blast 11 fours and 6 sixes and they would have even won the game had they got another half a dozen of big ones.
People say cricket is a team game but as far as T20 format is concerned it is the individual brilliance on a given day that counts.