How a ‘heavy ball’ is reshaping the rhythm of BPL nights

As Sylhet continues to host this year’s BPL, heavy dew is coming into play more and more as the tournament goes deeper, especially in night matches. So much so that it has started to affect the batting in a big way.

Sylhet International Cricket Stadium’s wickets are known for their sporting nature, which usually produces good competition between bat and ball. But in night matches, conditions dictate terms a bit more than usual.

Dew is generally known for helping the batters more than the bowlers, as the wet ball is hard to grip and control. But too much dew does not help the batting side either. After a while, the ball gets big and heavy, which makes it harder to hit boundaries, and uneven bounce comes into play to make batting even trickier.

A classic example was the match between two heavyweights of the league — Rangpur Riders and Rajshahi Warriors — on Thursday night.

Both teams started well and eventually fell off in the later part of their innings, when the ball became really wet and heavy, producing uneven bounce.

Rajshahi batted first against a strong Rangpur bowling attack and got to 100 in the 11.4-over mark, with Najmul Hossain Shanto and Sahibzada Farhan looking a million dollars. But the 12-over-old ball started to play its tricks, and Rajshahi eventually finished with only 159/8.

Chasing that total under lights, Rangpur were cruising as they reached the 100 mark without too many losses by the 13th over. But they too fell off dramatically and ended up losing the match in the Super Over.

Rajshahi head coach Hannan Sarkar also pointed out that phase of the game.

“Yes, dew was definitely a factor. Because when the wicket gets wet and the ball becomes heavier, the ball tends to stay low. So naturally, we had an important call that we planned during the strategic timeout — which was to bring Ahin on for the 16th and 18th overs,” he said at the post match press conference.

“One of the main reasons for that was exactly this: the ball was skidding on and staying low, and because Ahin’s deliveries stay low, and there was also a left-handed batter at the crease, we built that into our strategy. And as you rightly pointed out, whenever the ball becomes heavier and gets wetter, it stays low — and we saw that in the batting of both teams,” he added.

Hannan further explained the pattern to Daily Sun following the press conference, hinting that batters might target the first ten overs to make up for the last ten.

“Yes, this might happen. Teams might attack more early on. That also changes the tactics from the bowling perspective. Early on, traditionally, you would go for wickets and be okay with giving away a few extra runs for that. But with the changing conditions, knowing that scoring will be harder later on, you might want to squeeze rather than go for the kill. So you might see economical bowling early on,” he added.