The quiet phase after the field spreads is where the innings is actually won

Everyone measures the opening burst, but the run rate that separates good sides from average ones arrives just after it.

The first six overs get the attention because they are the easy story. Restrictions on, boundaries available, a hard ball and a fast bowler. Both sides know exactly what is happening and both are well drilled for it, which is precisely why the difference between a strong batting side and a poor one is smaller there than anywhere else in the innings.

Watch what happens when the ring spreads. Two fielders go back, the spinner comes on, and a large number of teams simply stop. Singles get taken, nobody risks anything, and eight or nine overs go by at a rate that would be respectable in a fifty-over game and is a slow bleed in a twenty-over one. The scorecard afterwards says the total was built at the start and lost at the death. It is wrong on both counts.

The mechanism is a fear problem, not a skill problem. A batter who is set at that stage has a lot to lose and the field is arranged to make risk unattractive. Two men out means the aerial shot is covered on both sides, and the sensible-looking option is to milk. Milking gets you eight an over at best against a competent spinner, and eight an over across four overs is exactly the deficit that has to be repaid later at greater risk against better bowling.

I would rather see the risk taken here. The bowler in this phase is usually the fifth option or a part-timer, the ball is still reasonably hard, and the batter is set, which is the one combination in the whole innings where the odds actually favour attacking. Compare that with the nineteenth over, when the specialist is bowling with a soft ball to a new batter and seven men on the fence, and ask which is the better place to take a chance.

The sides that understand this are usually the ones with a left-hander available to break up the spinner's rhythm and a batter comfortable hitting straight. Straight is the point. In this phase the long boundaries are square, the field is set for the sweep and the cut, and the ball down the ground is the cheapest boundary in cricket.

Nobody is going to build a broadcast graphic around the eighth over. They should.