The powerplay is two different phases and teams keep treating it as one

The first two overs and the last four ask opposite questions of a batter, and lumping them together hides who is actually good.

Six overs, two fielders out, one number on the scoreboard at the end of it. That number gets quoted as though the six overs were a single unit of the innings. They are not. The first two are a bowling phase and the last four are a batting phase, and the sides that understand the seam between them tend to win the ones decided by ten runs.

Overs one and two belong to whatever the new ball is doing. Hard seam, lacquer still on, the only period of the innings where a seamer can genuinely move it sideways rather than just off the pitch. A batter attacking there is not being brave, he is being loose, because the ball that beats the edge and the ball that takes it are separated by almost nothing.

By over three the shine has gone off one side and the movement with it. Now the field is still up, the ball is still hard, and it comes on to the bat. That is the cheapest scoring available in a Twenty20 innings and it lasts about twenty-four deliveries.

My argument is that most teams get the split backwards. They come out swinging at the very moment the ball is most dangerous, lose an opener, and then spend overs three to six rebuilding while the restrictions quietly expire. They have attacked the hard phase and defended the easy one.

The better shape is dull to watch and I would take it every time. See off the first twelve balls at something close to a run a ball, accept that you are behind the required rate, then go hard from over three with all ten wickets and a field that is legally obliged to stay in the ring.

You can see this in how good sides use their strike bowlers, incidentally. The captain who holds his best seamer back until over three is not saving him for the death. He is refusing to let the opposition have the easy phase for free.

There is a counter-argument and it deserves saying. On a small ground with a flat pitch, the new ball never really talks, and the first two overs are just as free as the rest. Fair. But you find that out by watching two overs, and two overs is a cheap price for information.

Score the phases separately. You will stop praising the wrong openers.