By DTB & Anil
August 2 2005

In ODIs, a dot ball is a dull sight. Even if a batsman cannot readily score in boundaries, it is of paramount importance that he rotates strike efficiently. It could be argued that dot-ball rate is a better indication of ODI performance than strike rate. You can get boundaries off edges which improve your strike rate, but if you are unable to score rapidly and urgently, then you're not an ODI player.

Rotating strike is critical: from the point of view of getting steady run-rate close to 6 even in difficult conditions and against good bowling attacks, as well as allowing the other batsman to score when you're stuck.

In tests, the byword is "play yourself in first", which means playing out dot balls when you first arrive at the crease.

In ODIs, "playing yourself in" should consist of eschewing the grand shots and boundaries, and focussing on singles.

Many a time, we have seen batsmen unable to score, and unable to allow the other batsman a chance. Maiden overs may be played out, or field restrictions remain untapped.

Let us consider the following:

Sehwag hits 100 off 99 balls (74 dot balls and 15 fours)
Dravid hits 100 off 99 balls (45 dot balls and 6 fours)

Which one is better?

One tends to assume they are about equal, since the strike rate is the same. But in fact, Dravid's knock is better.

It is better to play less dot balls, and rely less on hitting boundaries.

1. When you rely heavily on boundaries, you take more risks.

2. When you rely heavily on boundaries, it becomes difficult to rotate strike and hence risks must be taken when confronted with a string of dot balls. Indian batting chokes in the middle overs because most our strokemakers rely on boundaries.

Take Yuvraj Singh's innings against the Windies yesterday. He was hitting the ball sweetly many times but couldn't find the gaps, hence played far too many dot balls. Had he concentrated on singles, he'd have had a higher strike rate and thus less pressure.

Concentrating on singles might help players like Virender Sehwag. Whenever Sehwag gets through the initial few overs, watching for pace and bounce without going for the boundaries, he tends to score big.

In addition, bowlers' line, length, and concentration suffers if strike is rotated and the likelihood of loose balls increases as the bowler tries something new.

Indian batting relies heavily on big strokes to get runs. This works fine when the confidence level is high and batsmen are in form. If they can smash the ball to the boundaries from the first ball onwards without risking their wicket, more power to them.

But when a player is not in form, confidence level is low, and pressure on him high, hitting those big scoring shots becomes tough. A prime example is Ganguly.

Dravid used to look for big strokes and suffered in his early ODI career. He changed his game by looking for singles and punishing loose deliveries for fours. This is why he won't appear to go out of form easily and even when he does, he can regain form easier compared to Gangs/Yuvis. One of the major reasons for our poor form in ODI recently is because of the main batsman dependency on boundaries. When confidence and form suffers, they are unable to score.

Looking for fours is fine when you get loose balls and during the slog overs. But otherwise, it is important to harvest ones, twos and threes when it is not possible to hit the big shots.

But at no time should a player get in the mode of "tap good balls back, allow bad balls thru to the keeper" as if he has all the time in the world. You never know when you'll get out. Dot-balls are neither in the spirit of the ODI cricket format, nor in the spirit of spectator entertainment.