Has Harry Tector finally figured out T20?
The YMCA man is batting too low, but how would you change the order to facilitate him?
Most batters would bite your hand off for Harry Tector’s stat line at the end of the 2-1 T20 series victory over Zimbabwe.
Runs - 126
Average - 63
Strike Rate - 121.15
This looks like the start of Tector’s T20 career catching up to his 50-over exploits, no? Surely this is just the opening act of a World Cup year when the short form numbers catch up to the talent?
Maybe.
Tector hasn’t really figured out international T20. Since January 2022, Tector is averaging 61 in ODIs. His career average over 40 games, not an insufficient number, is a tick over 50. That is sustained, elite form.
In T20, his career average is 23. It’s not as important a number in the short format, more so his career strike-rate of 121 runs per 100 balls faced. It depends on how your line-up is constructed, but most teams would want their number four to be scoring at a faster lick.
Tector’s strike-rate in this series, 121.15, is only really a hair above his career number. He scored more runs than he normally does in T20, but not at a faster pace.
Does that matter?
In both games that Tector scored more than 25, Ireland won.
In both games, Tector wasn’t the match-winner. Instead, he facilitated others to turn the game Ireland’s way. In game two, Curtis Campher finished on 37 (24) with a strike-rate of 157. Sunday’s game was largely decided by George Dockrell finishing on 49 off 32, good for a strike-rate of 150. In both games, when Ireland needed an injection of momentum, it was Tector’s partners who provided it.
Disparagement is not the aim here. No one can win a game on their own. Tector being set made it easier for others to take risks. He was a traditional anchor. On Sunday, Tector didn’t hit a boundary until his 31st ball. At one point he was on 15 off 23 deliveries, later 21 off 27. Ireland needed a steady hand, but he would tell you himself that it didn’t need to be that steady - it was essentially an ODI innings.
To be fair, Saturday’s knock did have more of a running start with three boundaries in Tector’s first nine balls.
Herein lies the conundrum. All that matters on the day is that Ireland won and Tector played his part. To look at scoring rates in isolation would be to unfairly dismiss game situation. Yet when looking at the big picture, you need to analyse scoring rates.
Tector’s success, and his occupation of the crease, only gave us more time to look at a reality that is becoming more stark: in T20s, number 4 is too low for him to bat.
Reason number one: Tector’s record vs spin.
In the middle order, batting predominately outside the powerplay, you see more spin. Here are Tector’s strike-rates vs bowling types in T20 internationals:
Leg-spin: 109
Left-arm spin: 113
Off-spin: 113
Pace: 126
Get that man attacking the seamers in the powerplay with the field up. When he bats now in the powerplay, Ireland are already two wickets down and he’s in rebuilding mode.
On Thursday, he and Tucker were bogged down by spinners Sikandar Raza and Sean Williams after Andrew Balbirnie’s blistering start.
After what happened in that game, on Saturday Zimbabwe attacked Tector and Tucker with spin as soon as they came to the crease together, Williams bowling the 5th. Similarly on Sunday, once Ireland were two down, left-arm spinner Wellington Masakadza was given the fourth over. That’s not a coincidence.
Tangentially, despite his reputation as a good player of spin, Tucker strikes at 95 vs leg-spin and 111 vs slow left arm. When those two are at the crease together, it’s a no-brainer to spin the ball away from them. Compare that to Stirling who hits left-arm spin at 136.
Reason number two for Tector being too low: look who's above him.
Here are the career batting strike-rates for Ireland’s top four.
Stirling - 135
Balbirnie - 125
Tucker - 123
Tector - 121
After Stirling, who’s not scoring any runs at the moment, it’s all very samey. A bunch of right handers who strike at the low-to-mid 120s.
There’s nothing wrong with a number four like Tector who prefers to be in an anchor role. England last year won a World Cup with Ben Stokes batting at four. His strike-rate for that tournament? 106 - and he single-handedly won them the final against Pakistan batting slowly.
The problem there is that Stokes had Alex Hales (138), Jos Buttler (145) and Phil Salt (149) and their excellent career strike-rates all batting ahead of him in that final. As it happens, none of those three scored any runs in the decider, but the point is this: if they spend time at the crease before Stokes, he comes in with the pressure off and just ticks the strike over to whoever is in and firing.
In Ireland’s case, the numbers say that even if the top three spend time at the crease before Tector, for Ireland to score enough to trouble the best teams he’ll still have to come in and add some impetus. It’s hard to ask a man with a career strike-rate of 121, who scores even slower than that against spin, to do so.
Ireland have a very clear T20 identity, one that’s been set for over a year now. Balbirnie and Stirling go hard-ish (even if Balbirnie sometimes chews up enough dots to negatively offset his boundaries), before Tucker, Tector and Campher keep ticking along to set things up for Dockrell, Adair, Delany and sometimes McCarthy to finish with a bang. It’s batting by committee with multiple players contributing to wins - this series being the perfect embodiment.
Here’s Tector himself on his role: “I think my job is to try and carry us through that [middle] period at a tempo that’s required for the situation, whilst also trying to set a platform for the guys at the back end.
“I was spoken to before the series about that’s how we wanted to approach our T20 cricket and I’m pretty happy with how I’ve done that over the series.”
This means Tector will generally not be Ireland’s aggressor.
You could say they have things backwards. If Ireland have depth all the way down to McCarthy at 9, that should empower them to go harder - that’s what England do, but those career strike-rates show that Ireland don’t. Maybe they can’t.
Ireland’s batting line-up is a case of squeezing in what they see as their best players and hoping one or two come off. It’s why Paul Stirling always wants to bat second at the toss. Given the sedate scoring of the top four, plus a line-up construction that doesn’t maximise the strengths of someone like Tector who should face more pace than spin, batters are more comfortable knowing exactly how many runs they need to get. Do the bare minimum to get the job done.
If Ireland were to bat first, as they did on Thursday, it’s trickier for this line-up to know what a winning score is - they’re not set up to blow teams away.
If this is Ireland’s bed and they’ve made it, so be it. It’s conservative. It’s likely an acknowledgement that they don’t have the cattle to play the hyper-aggressive style of T20 cricket that is successful elsewhere in the world.
Yet they do have a left-hander with a strike-rate of 167 in domestic T20 this season in the squad - Neil Rock. My curiosity to bring him in and move Tector to 3 would likely necessitate the dropping of Tucker. That’s a huge call. But in the interest of T20 line-up construction, of maximising Tector’s strengths and seeing if Rock can bring his newfound power game to international level in advance of next year’s World Cup, there is a logic to it.
I can’t see it happening. In the never-ending debate between legacy (Tucker’s 2022 World Cup run) and recent form, Tucker will likely be given the opportunity to come good again.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Tector is too low at 4. In T20, give him more balls to face sooner in his innings to speed up the acceleration which he does have in his game. Then see if someone else can add more impetus in that middle order slot, be it Tucker, Rock or even Campher with his career strike-rate of 129.
If Tector starts scoring runs at a strike-rate of 135 before next June’s World Cup then this conversation is moot - he would be perfect at 4 in this line-up. Heck, if he scores buckets of runs at 120 again and Ireland win enough games to have a successful World Cup, no one will care.
But as long as he is scoring in the mid 120s at number four, with no one striking much quicker than that above him, Ireland are limiting the number of ways in which they can win. 50 off 40 from a top four batter won’t win you many games. Dockrell and the boys down the back end have to fire, and that finishing job is the most volatile and inconsistent in cricket.
Changes can be made that make more T20 sense. Tector can be the anchor at 3 and everything behind him can become flexible - send Campher at 4 to sweep the spinners, or Dockrell if there’s only pace to come, or Rock to whack the leggies and left-armers.
The current strategy worked in this series. Whether it works against better, more aggressive opposition is another matter entirely.
I like that as an eleven, but the batting order is tricky. Could Harry Tector open, and move Paul Stirling down to 4 or 5? If Campher has the technique and temperament for the no. 3 spot in the ODIs, could he not open, although it is a big workload if he is to bowl his 4 overs too?
Prehaps Ireland need to pick 5 bowlers, with a back up of Tector and Dockrell, from this series Campher, Adiar, Delanly Young and Little and this would leave space for both Rock and Tucker in the XI