Wickets in the middle overs are worth more than they cost to buy

Sides defend through overs seven to fifteen to protect an economy rate, and hand the opposition the only phase they can attack.

Overs seven through fifteen are where most Twenty20 matches are actually decided and almost nobody bowls them as though that were true. The field is spread, the ball is soft, and the standard instruction is to keep it tight and get through the phase. Meanwhile two set batters accumulate at eight an over without ever taking a risk, and by the sixteenth over they have wickets in hand and a licence to double it.

That is the trap. Restricting the middle overs to a modest rate is not a defensive success if it arrives with ten wickets standing, because everything the batting side saves gets spent at the death with interest.

The alternative is to spend runs on wickets deliberately. Attacking fields in the ninth over. A slip in. Bowlers going wider of the crease for the edge rather than into the pad for the dot. You will concede more, and the over-by-over graphic will look bad for a while, and the payoff comes later when the fifteenth over brings a new batter to the crease who needs six deliveries to see the ball.

The value is compounding rather than immediate, which is exactly why it gets undersold. A wicket in the ninth over does not just remove a player. It removes the acceleration he would have provided in the eighteenth, and it forces the next man to spend his first three balls at a strike rate near seventy in a phase where the required rate is climbing.

I would put a number on the trade the way I would put a number on any other. If an attacking field costs you eight extra runs across the phase and buys one additional wicket, take it every time, because the batter you removed was going to cost you far more than eight in the last four overs.

What stops captains doing it is the shape of the criticism. Nobody gets blamed for the runs that were never scored. A captain who posts a slip and watches the ball fly past it for four gets asked what he was thinking. A captain who lets a batter reach forty off thirty in complete comfort gets described as controlling the game.

He is not controlling it. He is renting it, and the payment falls due in the seventeenth over.