Cricket:Alex Tudor fears T20 is killing cricket’s traditional skills
The rise of Twenty20 cricket risks making young English players turn their backs on fast bowling and expert batting.
England faced New Zealand in Delhi today chasing a place in the final of the World Twenty20 tournament they won in superb style six years ago.
Yet according to former England all-rounder Alex Tudor, who now coaches aspiring cricketers of the future at the prestigious Kimbolton School in Bedfordshire, the shortest form of the game may kill off two of its most celebrated arts.
“The bowlers all want to bowl leg-spin,” Tudor told Standard Sport. “Even the ones you think would have the potential to be quick bowlers would rather bowl spin. Bowling spin is generally much easier on the body.
“And the nature of Twenty20 — which is often played on flat wickets which give all the advantage to the batsmen — means that bowling fast is not attractive to young kids these days.
“There is so little margin of error. You get it slightly wrong and you go for four.
“You might as well become a spin bowler because they are having all the joy. Look at this tournament, where players like Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi [of New Zealand] have had success, along with West Indies’ Samuel Badree and Imran Tahir, of South Africa.
“When you look at the young batsmen I coach, there isn’t too much evidence of the high left elbow required for classical off-side strokes. They all want to play ramp shots, scoops (as demonstrated by England’s Jos Buttler, right) or switch hits.”
Tudor also does stints at the Andrew Flintoff Cricket Academy, for five-to-16-year-olds, and has his own coaching business with former Surrey and England spinner Ian Salisbury, so he has a clear idea of the state of youth cricket in this country.
He believes Test cricket will soon go the way of Twenty20, with risky batting leading to rapid run-rates and short matches. “The way New Zealand played in the Test series last summer, when they went out with the intention of scoring more than 300 runs in a day, will become the benchmark,” Tudor added.
Surrey captain Gareth Batty believes, however, that cricket’s traditional skills remain as important as ever — despite the changes brought about by Twenty20.
Batty cited Jason Roy, his county colleague and England limited-overs batsman, to argue that certain values are still prized in the game.
He said: “Jason made his debut for Surrey in a Twenty20 game in 2008 but his main aim is to play Test cricket one day. However they came into the game and whatever their strengths are, the best players always want to get better.
“So you still have batsmen like [Sri Lankan] Kumar Sangakkara, who can smash a Twenty20 hundred in next to no time but also show the craftsmanship required to score a Test century. Virat Kohli [of India] is in the same bracket.”
Batty has noticed, though, that fewer batsmen in the county game are capable of playing a long innings, while fewer bowlers are able to outwit an accomplished opponent.
“That’s the worry,” he added. “A lot of bowlers know how to stop a guy hitting them out of the ground but do they know how to get him out? Similarly, many batsmen can hit the ball a long way but how many can craft an innings over a long period?”
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