The effects a mistimed shoe-sale can have over T-20.
Gents ! Assume that on the day RCB is supposed to begin its victory march by ruthlessly mauling the Cobras, a cunning businessman schedules a shoe-sale for women near Chinnaswamy Stadium. Not only is the businessman cunning, he is cruel enough to announce that the sale begins at 10 PM, the time by which only one innings would be over. For those blessed with wives and girlfriends, I need not explain the consequences. For those who aren’t, I would suggest that you use your imagination to create a fictitious female partner. Belonging to your clan myself, I am sure you are quite adept at it.

Ladies! Assume that, oh well, you already read about the shoe sale and I know (without understanding why) how badly you need that 731st pair of shoes. By virtue of her gender, even the fictitious girlfriend wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity.

So now all the fans call up Anil Kumble and Graeme Smith and apprise them of the predicament. Anil comes up with a fair judgment of restricting both the innings down to 10 overs a side. Authorities immediately gun down the idea fearing that it may trigger the downfall of T-20 format. While ODI has had the time of its life, doing such thing to T20 would be nothing short of infanticide.

Anil comes up with an alternative: Since we have time enough for just one innings, let one captain propose a target score (say 180). The other captain would then be given an option to defend it or chase it.The match would be over in that one innings. Let the captain who loses the toss propose the score, while the toss-winning captain would have the comfort of choosing between batting and bowling. Now if Anil loses the toss and he proposes 3000, then Smith would definitely choose to bowl despite the presence of Manish Pandey and Jesse Ryder in RCB. If Kumble proposes 35, then Smith would kiss Anil’s hand and say “We would bat.”

But Anil, as we know, is a tough customer, whose hands are meant to spin the world around rather than being kissed. He might assess that 160 is a par score on the wicket and then realizing that Cobras would rather bat than bowl, Anil would propose a higher score of say 170. Being greedier and proposing 200 might prompt Smith to choose bowling and so a 170 looks a good bargain to me.

Readers, do you have the same opinion about 170? Also, what if Smith loses the toss? What score do you think he should propose to Anil? When you get into Smith’s shoes (Ah, the shoes), you would realize the misfortune of facing a balanced team like RCB.

I would end this post with a trivia. Do you know that in the current IPL format with 8 teams, where each team plays twice against all the other teams, it is possible for a team to lose 10 out of its 14 league matches and still make it to the semis. On the similar lines, a team can be unfortunate enough to win 10 matches and still be shown the door after the league stages.