'The nature of the game is risk'
You don't have to be a slam-bang thrasher to succeed while batting in Twenty20, but you need to be able to adapt, Mark Ramprakash tells Nagraj Gollapudi
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Mark Ramprakash Initially when I played Twenty20, I just wasn't up with the pace of the game because the fielding team were charging around trying to get their overs in very quickly, and every ball was a very big event. So as a batsman I had to get used to the pace of the game. I had to weigh up the situation quicker, decide what areas I was looking to score, and that was a very big adjustment for someone who was used to playing four-day cricket or a 50-overs game.
MR The changes were mainly mental. If you've got a pretty decent technique and you're a run-scorer, you'll have good, orthodox cricket shots you can score a lot of runs with - playing down the ground, picking the gaps in the V, wide of long-on and long-off.
MR Yes, Shiv is a very good example. He is a clever batsman who works his way out and is a good improviser in Test and one-day cricket. There are players who you may think are orthodox players but they are still good because they can adapt to the situation.
Although it's a short game it does take a lot of concentration because each delivery is a big event |
MR You are weighing up a lot when you're out in the middle: the pace of the pitch, the size of the boundary and so on. Personally, I try to decide which bowler I can get after. You've to think very quickly on your feet out in the middle as to how you're going to go about scoring the runs. If the ball is quick then you can deflect it using its pace, and if the spinners are on you can try and hit the ball out of the ground ... things like that.
MR You have to go hard in the first six overs and try and dominate when there are only two fielders outside the circle. If that goes well, you try and continue the momentum through the 20 overs. Of course, if you lose wickets it can slow down things. But what you can do is, in the middle overs - seven to 14 - if you can hit at least one boundary each over and try and pick up singles, you are going at around eight an over, which is generally pretty good going.
MRThe early batsmen do have to make a quick assessment of the pitch and conditions to determine what they think is a par score, a reasonable score. For example, at a ground like The Oval, which is a very good batting pitch with good bounce, the par score may be 180, while on a pitch which is a bit slower or a ground that has bigger boundaries it may only be 150. So its up to the early batsmen to assess the conditions and then they can set the tone for the team's innings.
Nagraj Gollapudi is assistant editor of Cricinfo Magazine