Boundary percentage hides the batters who actually win close games

Two hard runs cost the fielding side the same as a stroke that is applauded, and no scouting document records them.

Sixty percent of a total comes in fours and sixes at the top level, roughly, and that fact has been used to justify a decade of selection thinking that treats power as the only scoring skill worth paying for. The remaining forty percent is dismissed as accumulation, as though it happened by itself while the important work was going on.

Look at where a close chase is decided. Twelve needed off the last over, field on the fence, and the batter who can turn a mistimed drive into two by sprinting is worth more in that moment than the man who can hit a full toss into the second tier, because there is no full toss coming. The bowler is aiming at the base of the stumps and the best available outcome is a jabbed ball into a gap. The difference between one and two there is the match.

Running is also a fielding-side tax that compounds. A pair who consistently turn ones into twos force the ring in, force the deep men to charge, and cause exactly the kind of hurried throw that becomes an overthrow. None of that appears anywhere in a batting record. What appears is the strike rate, which conveniently credits the runs but says nothing about how they were obtained or what they did to the opposition's shape.

There is a physical argument against it and it should be taken seriously. Hard running late in an innings costs energy that a batter needs for hitting, and in extreme heat the trade is real. Some coaches deliberately tell their power hitters not to run hard early so that the last five overs are available at full capacity. I understand it. I also think it is applied far too widely, mostly to players who are not fit enough and have been given a tactical excuse.

The recruitment consequence is the one that annoys me. Running between the wickets is easy to assess, cheap to improve and almost never mentioned in a signing announcement.

Nobody has ever been bought for the second run. Plenty of teams have lost tournaments for want of it.