Pinch-hitters are passe, make way for pinch-blockers

CARDIFF, May 20: The 1996 World Cup saw a new, exotic cricketing term coined the pinch-hitter. 1999 looks set to become the year of the `...

CARDIFF, May 20: The 1996 World Cup saw a new, exotic cricketing term coined the pinch-hitter. 1999 looks set to become the year of the “pinch-blocker”. Sri Lankan opener Sanath Jayasuria all but re-invented the game three years ago. He thrived on the flat, true wickets of the Indian sub-continent, where the ball rarely deviates through the air or off the pitch.

Jayasuriya flung his bat in a wide, straight arc and fielders, forced by new rules to crowd the infield rather than mass along the boundary, trudged back to retrieve the ball from the packed stands. A virtual unknown, the square-shouldered Jayasuriya was to become the player of the tournament, scoring so fast — 82 off 44 balls against England in Faisalabad and the 43 he helped post in the first three overs against India in New Delhi that games were over before they had begun.

Sri Lanka won the trophy and one-day cricket, they said, would never be the same again. Three years on, Jayasuriya is averaging 17 after two innings. The defendingchampions have lost their opening two games and face an early exit from the tournament.

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Pinch-hitters a term originally stolen from baseball are passe. As many strategists had forecast, the combination of England’s early-summer cloud-cover and moist wickets and a white ball which darts about in the air more than its red cousin are proving a bowler’s delight.

Jayasuriya and the clones spawned by his success — Adam Gilchrist of Australia, Mark Boucher of South Africa, Shahid Afridi of Pakistan and England’s Nick Knight — are pinch-hitting, pinch-missing, pinch-edging and pinch-walking back to the pavilion.

Gilchrist — who scored 154 off 129 balls against Sri Lanka in Melbourne in February — scored six in his one outing. Boucher is averaging 17.5 from two. Knight has been dropped from the team altogether. Afridi, statistically the only player in the world to hit more than a run a ball, has one score of 11.

Nasser Hussain of England may represent the 1999 breed to replace them; batsmen who beginwith survival on their minds, then accelerate the scoring as the pitch dries out and the sun breaks through.

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Hussain, the man who ousted Knight from the England team, pleaded last week: “Please don’t call me a pinch-blocker … I will be seeking to make match-winning contributions of my own.”

But the term may yet stick. His softly-softly approach saw him put on an opening stand of 50 with Alec Stewart against Sri Lanka, just the start England needed, then helped him to 88 not out against Kenya.

The tournament hosts, declared no-hopers before the event, have two wins out of two and set fair for the next round.

Ironically, however, `pinch-blockers’ are nothing new. English one-day cricket has always been played like this. The dash for runs always came in the last 10 overs, not the first 15. It is a `back to the future’

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innovation, based more on short memories than new strategies. Cricket will never be the same again. Again.

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