Picture two batters walking off the pitch, both with 40 runs off 24 balls. Statistically, they are identical.

One scored them in a chase, where his team needed 110 off 60 balls with six wickets remaining, which means a high pressure environment, and aggressive intent were required. The other scored the 40 runs when only 70 were needed off 72 balls, with eight wickets in hand — no urgency, less pressure and things more in control.

Statistics treat both innings identically. However, any cricket fan watching from Mumbai to Lahore to Sydney knows that they were not.

Numbers lie, or at least they hide something. This gap between what the numbers say and what actually happened on the field isn’t just becoming annoying, it’s glaring in the context of T20s. It is also the starting point for a new analytical framework called Contextual Batting Intelligence, or CBI, developed by me.

Strike rate alone was never built to answer the question that actually matters to T20 captains, coaches and selectors: did the batter make and execute the right decision for that specific moment? Contextual Batting Intelligence attempts to give that answer…

Strike rate alone was never built to answer the question that actually matters to T20 captains, coaches and selectors: did the batter make and execute the right decision for that specific moment? Contextual Batting Intelligence attempts to give that answer…

A DIFFERENT QUESTION ALTOGETHER

Most cricket analytics still lean heavily on strike rate, which is a metric that measures runs scored per hundred balls faced. It’s useful and simple, but it’s also blind to context. A batter smashing 20 off 10 balls in a hopeless chase looks identical, statistically, to one doing the same in a tight finish.

My framework argues that strike rate alone was never built to answer the question that actually matters to captains, coaches and selectors: did the batter make and execute the right decision for that specific moment?

A recent widely debated instance of this emerged during the Indian Premier League (IPL)........

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