Bat and ball / Andrew Hughes / 30 August 2008 / Leave a comment

Andrew Hughes looks at the different skills neeed to excel as a batsman in the Test and 50-over forms of the game. The truly great batsmen, will be be truly great at both.

The reputation of a cricketer is weighed in the five day game. Test cricket is where you chisel your name in the great stone annals of the game whilst one day cricket is the moonlighting (or should that be floodlighting?) that pays the bills. The most dreadful words of all to an aspiring international cricketer are 'one day' and 'specialist', words that can confine and wither a career before it has flowered.

Players like Neil Fairbrother and Michael Bevan spent much of their international lives in the cramped confines of the limited overs pigeon hole. It is an impossible plight to escape from. If you do well, your status as a one day specialist is underlined in thick black marker. If you do poorly, you are dropped altogether.

It is particularly cruel, because there really is no such thing as a one day specialist. Those, like Bevan, whose international time has been spent mainly in pyjamas, merely find themselves in that position through having failed to take their chance in Test cricket. Others, like Fairbrother, are the victims of a tentative selection policy, in which young players with potential are blooded in the fifty over game first and then never really given a chance in the longer format.

There is very little technical difference between the demands of the two versions of the great game. The best Test players have thrived in all formats. You only have to look at the records of Richards, Tendulkar, Lara and Pietersen to see that. It is still bat against ball and class will always out.

The main difference between the two is in the realm of psychology. Batting in limited overs cricket is a compressed, frenetic activity. It puts a premium on quick thinking, sharp running between the wickets, the ability to find the boundary not when a bad ball comes, but once or twice an over, every over. The batsman has to make something happen and there is little time to dwell on the contest.

What puts the Test in Test cricket, by contrast, is the intense psychological pressure that comes with the longer format. It is a mental challenge that many players find hard to meet. Forty runs required in five overs is one thing. Four hundred runs in five hours is quite another. Test cricket is about patience and attrition. A batsman's technique and concentration must stand up to a prolonged examination, not the quick Q&A session of the shorter game.

It could be argued that the two forms complement one another. Players find their stroke making and intelligence tested in the shorter version, their mental strength and courage tried in the longer game.

However, there have been developments in the last ten years that have made the fifty over game less of a batting challenge. The fielding restrictions for the first fifteen overs had a small impact, increasing the margin for error for those big shots. But the reduction and standardisation of boundaries to the 65 metre mark means that the flat-footed slogger with a good eye is now more likely to hit sixes than fielders. Twenty20 cricket has accelerated this trend. Whilst the best players are the best players in any format, limited overs cricket these days is a far more level playing field. In years to come, there may be many more players typecast as limited overs specialists, when the truth is their technique and mentality are simply inadequate for the longer game.