10 Current cricketers who are not made for T20 cricket

T20 cricket during its infancy was slightly different from how it is played today. Especially, the international teams in the late end of the 2000s decade used to cast their traditional openers or touch players who substantially used to bat deep irrespective of their decent strike rates. More importantly, the sheer role of anchoring at the top used to be an encouragement for the pure longer format players to exclusively indulge themselves in the shortest format.

However, now with T20 cricket’s landscape receiving a constant change, the batters with gargantuan strike rates have gained an utter prominence merely because of the pace at which the towering high scores are attained. Even the enhanced flat decks worldwide have encouraged a thundering form of batting which in many ways has brought in the emergence of T20 specialists.

Also, with many teams now casting their best batters at the top to face as many deliveries as possible, the traditional form of batting, in general, has almost got eradicated. Hence, with all respect to a certain player’s skillset and gameplay, let’s see

Current cricketers who might not find the T20 cricket suitable

1. Cheteshwar Pujara

Cheteshwar Pujara’s wall-like presence has so far predominantly made him a rare successful defensive batsman who barely likes to counterattack. While often you might see him take a charge against the spinners for strike rotation, very elusively you may view him dancing down and giving a hard whack at the long-on or long-off region. Also, with utterly getting ingrained with the waiting game, Pujara’s mainstream shots against pace have been the punches, the drives, the flicks, and the odd pull or hook.

Now while the above gameplay might have yielded Pujara a massive success in Test cricket, such a rigid base has also never allowed the cricketer to freely open himself up and play some attacking T20 cricket. With his obtuse one-dimensional batting being evident in his overall T20 numbers, the cricketer from his 64 T20 games has a reasonable average of 29.47 along with a strike rate which is just a tad over 100 (109.35).

Even in the IPL, where Pujara has played five consecutive seasons since 2010, the cricketer from his 30 matches has an unpleasing record, as his overall average stands at 20.52 along with a strike rate that is almost just touching 100 (99.74). In fact, when it comes to hitting sixes, Pujara has merely hit four of them in the IPL and in totality has 16 more in his overall T20 career. Hence, with being someone whose barely muscular and neither innovative with his T20 batting, the shortest format might not be an ideal place for Cheteshwar Pujara to play some quality white-ball cricket.