In twenty overs nobody has time to set a batter up

The classical wicket-taking plan needs an over budget the short format does not give you, so containment has to do the work.

Four overs. That is the whole allocation, and they are rarely consecutive. Whatever a bowler learned about building pressure across a spell, about three balls outside off and one that comes back, about tempting somebody into the drive over six deliveries, does not survive contact with a format where he might face a given batter for nine balls all night.

So the plan has to change and mostly it has, though the language has not. Commentary still describes a dismissal as a setup, still reads a sequence of deliveries as though it were a deliberate three over construction, when the more honest account is that the bowler bowled the best ball he had for the situation and the batter, who was required to take risks by the scoreboard, mishit it.

That is the mechanism that matters. Wickets in short cricket are mostly manufactured by the required rate rather than by the bowler. Squeeze two overs, force the batter to attack a ball he would otherwise leave, and the wicket arrives from a delivery that would have been a defensive push in any other context. Containment is the wicket taking strategy. They are not opposed.

Which means the way we evaluate bowlers is off. A bowler who concedes twelve in his first two overs and then takes two wickets in his last two gets the figures and the man of the match discussion. A bowler who conceded eight across two overs at the other end, and created the pressure that produced both wickets, gets a modest economy rate and no credit. I would swap their valuations without much hesitation.

There is a caveat, and it is the one place classical setup survives. The first two balls a new batter faces are genuinely a distinct opportunity, and the good bowlers do have a rehearsed pair for it. Not a three over plan. A two ball plan. Hard length then wide yorker, or wide then straight. Something that can actually be executed inside the window that exists.

Beyond that, I would stop asking bowlers to think like Test bowlers with a stopwatch on them. Give them a length that is hard to hit at this ground, on this surface, against this batter, and let the scoreboard do the setting up. It is less romantic. It is what is actually happening.