Posted by We adore nrrdling (the hugely unambitious art of batting to make defeat slightly less awful because it improves your chances of going through to the next stage of the tournament should your team finish level on points with another). It’s not really a thing in T20 though. Due to the constricted nature of the format, the way you bat to make defeat slightly less awful is pretty much exactly the way you’d bat when still actively trying to win. There’s nothing to enjoy in that.
A really good nrrdle – something like Marnus Labuschagne’s 46 off 74 balls in the 2023 50-over World Cup – is utterly detached from the supposed goal of a side batting second, which is trying to score enough runs to actually win. That’s the thrill of the endeavour: watching a professional sportsperson conduct themselves in such a way that they seem wholly unaware of their central purpose.
The whole point of playing international sport is trying to win. To watch someone perform in a way where they are actively making victory less likely with every nrrdled single therefore provides a 1.21 gigawatt bolt of electric wrong-headed contradiction.
We love it. Seeing an international sports team with a perfectly legitimate reason to aim so low just makes our heart sing. Feel the thrill!
As such, we were momentarily uplifted to learn that there is a net run rate (NRR) situation brewing in Group 1 of the Super 8s phase of this T20 World Cup. India got hammered by South Africa and their NRR is not good and now there is a chance they’ll finish level on points with someone. Huzzah!
But then we thought about NRR scenarios a bit and it is actually vanishingly unlikely that we’ll get a situation where a batter is looking to take singles to preserve or improve his team’s NRR. It just doesn’t work like that in this format. Totals are smaller, innings are shorter. By the time defeat is inevitable, you’ve generally only got a handful of balls left to play with, so you may as well try to hit them for four or six anyway.
We must now finish with an apology: we have somehow never once seen Revenge of the Nerds. Given Robert Carradine’s death earlier this week, this article is positively crying out for a Revenge of the Nrrds reference. Perhaps someone could contribute something appropriate in the comments section.
(We’re pretty sure you’re not meant to have favourite lines within the obituaries of people who’ve just killed themselves, but if it were acceptable, we’d go with The Guardian’s, “Carradine spent time undercover at the University of Arizona convincing real students he was an actual nerd.”)
- Sign up for our email or its weekly counterpart
- Feed the site; back our Patreon
- Buy our book, The 50 Most Ridiculous Ashes Moments
I rarely disagree with you, KC, but I do not see “the joy of NRR” in the same way. The pleasure is not primarily in watching players trying to manipulate the NRR in play, the pleasure is in thinking through all of the possible outcomes, including teams going through ahead of others on equal points but better NRR.
In that sense, Group One is still awash with possibilities, whereas the washout between NZ & Pakistan in Group Two ensured that NRR would not be part of the equation ridiculously early in the piece.
It might be, of course, that my opinion on this merely proves that I am more of a nrrd than you and most KC readers will ever be.
But it might also be a result of my age and stage. The first time I ever saw an ICC “world cup” (although not called that) match was in June 1975, in which Sunny Bhai aimed so low it almost defies description. Jim Laker tries to describe it in the vid embedded within this article. Jim attributes the extraordinary performance to selfishness, but I think it was an act of satyagraha.
https://ianlouisharris.com/1975/06/07/the-very-first-match-of-the-very-first-cricket-world-cup-i-was-there-in-our-living-room-as-were-tom-and-jerry-7-june-1975/
Whether the Little Master objected to the ODI competition or to Britain voting to join the EEC in the couple of days running up to this match isn’t and probably cannot be known. I mean, would you ask him that question now?
As an aside. Can someone explain to me why, in the India vs Zimbabwe game, Pandya was made man of the match when he only made 50 and didn’t take a wicket? Sharma scored more runs; Yadav and Varma had a higher batting strike rate; 4 Indian bowlers took more wickets including Singh who took 3 (for 24), while Mr Bennet on the other side scored 97 not out, and who now has a batting average of 277 for the competition.
Pandya? Really? Give over!
…maybe it was his hair wot won it.
Daisy has now pronounced on the result of this ICC World T20 Tournament. South Africa. Specifically, in the all important matter of Man Of The Tournament – Aiden Markram.
She’s not talking about cricket, folks, of course she isn’t. She’s talking about beards.
So impressed is she with “The Markram”, as currently sported, Daisy is talking about sculpting mine in a similar manner.
If several days pass without you hearing from me, please, someone, alert the authorities. I have images of Sweeney Todd flashing before my eyes.