T20 Blast follows Indian T20 League suit
Carlos Brathwaite-Ravichandran Ashwin (Image Source: BCCI/Twitter)
The Indian T20 League 2022 remained witness to a rare and unique incident when Ravichandran Ashwin decided to retire out in a match between Rajasthan and Lucknow. With the move, he made way for Riyan Parag, so that the scoring rate of the team picks up.
The cricket experts and fans felt that the path Ashwin showed might be taken by a lot of the teams in the future as a tactical plot in a match. Recent events in the T20 Blast proved that the teams are adapting and trying to use it to their advantage. The latest match of Birmingham against Nottinghamshire saw two batters retiring out for the cause of the team.
Talking about the match situation, the game was reduced to eight overs an innings. Birmingham batted first in the match and they put on a total of 98 runs in their quota of 8 overs on the back of Chris Benjamin’s fiery knock of 36 runs off 17 balls.
Carlos Brathwaite came out to bat in the 5th over of Birmingham’s innings and scored 17 runs off 11 balls before retiring out. Sam Hain replaced him in the crease but did not face a single delivery.
During the chase, Nottinghamshire lost very early, but a partnership of 55 runs between Ben Duckett and Alex Hales put the chase back on track. But things got tough as 15 runs were needed in the last over. Samit Patil walked in to bat at this stage but retired out after scoring 2 runs off 2 deliveries. But the move did not work for the team as they lost the match by one run. Courtesy of the win Birmingham moved to the second spot in the points table in the North Group.
While there have been other shreds of evidence of players retiring out for the cause of the team, two batters doing it in the same match is a very rare incident. But with the game evolving every day, this ploy can be expected to be a common one pretty soon.
