Send the tailender up at the thirteenth over

Promotion is treated as a powerplay trick, and the moment it would actually pay is the dead stretch nobody plans for.

Sixty eight for two after twelve. Two set batters had got themselves in, then one chipped a leading edge, and the new man walks out to a finger spinner whose length has gone unattacked for four overs. The rate is drifting down. Eight overs left. Everyone in the ground can feel the innings congealing.

That is the moment to send in somebody whose job description says bowler. Not the sixth over. Not the second. The thirteenth, when the field is spread, when the bowler is not going to get him out with a good ball, and when the downside of losing that wicket is genuinely small because two recognised batters are still padded up in the shed.

Teams do not do it. They send the next man on the list, who plays himself in for six balls out of professional habit, and the stall runs two more overs before anybody attacks. Then they lose by eleven and the post match discussion is about the death overs.

Promotion is unpopular because it looks stupid when it fails, and looking stupid carries an asymmetric cost for a captain. Sending a number nine in at thirteen overs and watching him hole out first ball is a clip that runs all week. The counterfactual, a slow grind to a below par total, is nobody's fault in particular. That is a coaching culture problem rather than a cricket problem.

The version I would actually run is narrower than the general argument. You need one specific player: a lower order batter who hits straight and long and does not need time to be set. You tell him in the dressing room, before the innings, that he is on standby for a spin over between eleven and fifteen. He is not being asked to bat. He is being asked to attack four balls. If he goes, the recognised batter who would have walked in walks in two overs later against the same bowler, and nothing was spent except a wicket that was probably never going to be used.

The sides doing genuinely clever things with the order are already halfway here, mostly through matchup promotions inside the first six. Extend it. The dead middle is where matches are quietly conceded and it is the least defended part of an innings, tactically, because nobody feels responsible for it.