Cricket was envisaged as a contest between bat and ball, and this belief was reflected in Test cricket. Played over five days, it gave its batsmen plenty of time, and its bowlers, plenty of opportunities. But the steadily dwindling popularity of the format signals that this arrangement missed the spectators’ interests. Years passed and stands emptied, steadily, to their present state where Tests see largely empty stadiums everywhere, except England and Australia.

It was not like this problem had not been anticipated. One Day International cricket saw the first shift of the balance of the game in the batsmen’s – and therefore, the entertainment-seeking audience’s – favour. Fielding restrictions were introduced, time was shortened, and hitting was incentivised as balls soaring into the sky are much easier to comprehend from the stands than a few inches of swing or 12 inches of flight.

Attendance increased, as did revenues. And so the idea of more entertainment per unit time gave birth to the Twenty20 – 20 overs for the batsmen, four for each bowler, and fireworks and cheerleaders every time the ball sails into the stands, which is surprisingly often.

From sport to sports entertainment

With this, sport had taken a leap towards sports entertainment, and the first casualty of that shift was the balance of bat and ball. It is not that the bowlers have been blown off the field in the shortest format of the game. It is only that the deck has been stacked against them because the batsman has become the crowd pleaser.

There is no equivalent of a Chris Gayle or Brendon McCullum from the bowlers’ side (though Mustafizur Rehman has lately captured people's imagination), and even the concept of a bowler-intensive team to capture a major Twenty20 trophy took Sunrisers Hyderabad nine years and David Warner’s extraordinary performances.

These examples may cite a bias, but never is this made clearer than through the ever-shortening boundaries at cricket stadiums for T20 games. The shortest distance to the boundary in the 2016 edition of the Indian Premier League was a mere 59 metres in a tournament where even 100 metre-long sixes are recorded constantly, not to mention the countless ones in the 80-90 metre range.

Combine that with the bats of the current era and the physical play of modern batsmen, and you can see how the proverbial commentary anecdote of the fielder in the deep being a mere spectator has become more and more real.

Batsmen are performing extraordinary feats of hitting so regularly now that exhilaration has been desensitised. During the recently Australia-Sri Lanka series in Australia, commentator Harsha Bhogle tweeted concerns to the same effect:

This was followed by Finch’s record-breaking 50 off 17 balls, not to mention Australia’s record-breaking first innings score of 263/3, aided by Glenn Maxwell’s whirlwind 146 – also a record. Simultaneously, mammoth scores lined India’s series against West Indies in Florida. In fact, in 2016 bowlers averaged 24.81 over 94 matches in T20Is, the seventh-highest in a calendar year since the format came into existence in 2005. Not only that, more sixes were hit in T20Is in 2016 (906) than any year before.

Fearless batsmen?

A lot of this can be seen in day-to-day Twenty20 cricket, and a particularly good example is Maxwell’s knock against Sri Lanka. The knock was undoubtedly thrilling, but, curiously, Maxwell barely cleared boundaries well inside the stadium at least twice in the innings, one of which, on 50 – a six over deep square leg – would have been a catch in the deep on any self-respecting field. Between narrow sixes like this and the phenomenon of increasingly phenomenal two-person collaboration catches that are a spectacle purely of the T20 generation, a story is being told, and it is one of batsmen losing their fear of lofting the ball because the boundary-lines are so near.

The battle on the 22 yards is as much of skill as it is between the minds of the batsmen and bowler. In this equation, the shortest format lays a premium on power-hitting, with the fear of a mishit leading to a catch on the ropes almost entirely ruled out in the batsmen’s mind, while simultaneously being compounded in the bowler’s. Commentators speak of the fearlessness of today's batsmen, but it is not as though this generation has seen more mavericks than any preceding them.

The decisive shift of the dynamics between bat and ball has emboldened the batsmen, and short-changed bowlers, because the weapon statistically most likely to get them a wicket – a catch in the deep – has been severely dented. Once this factor comes back into the equation, it becomes plain to see that the best T20 squad of hitters do not a Test team make.

Restoring the balance between bat and ball

In the interest of the craft of T20 bowling, therefore, a step in the direction of restoring this balance could prove to be a welcome one, and it could be potentially implemented by as little as a simple rule modification: Drop the boundaries back to regular stadium-length, and replace the 6s with 8s.

The move would increase the risk associated with clearing the ropes, setting the balance back in favour of the bowler every time a batsman goes for a big hit. At the same time, the batsman gets a higher reward, and has to take fewer risks. For instance, he will need three 8s instead of four 6s to get 24 runs.

With the boundaries back at ODI and Test distance, a well-struck shot is just as likely to carry over the ropes, but the mishits and top-edges that carry for six now will be penalised as they should, bringing the fast bowler’s bounce and the spinner’s flight back into the batsman’s mind.

Not only that, the spectacle of a devastating batsman in full form would also be compounded in favour of the audience, when 48 runs in an over could be available to a MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, AB DeVilliers, Chris Gayle and others. Moreover, this should close the gap between Test and T20 prowess of the same team or batsman.

High risk and high reward is the mantra of T20 cricket, and such a move would increase both, while giving the bowlers’ craft a well-deserved chance to thrive. For both sides of the 22 yard battle, the move could go a long way in separating the men from the boys.