India are winning the T20 space race

India are playing a form of the game sent from the future, while the other Asian teams are wondering which wrench to use.

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Asian cricket right now is a bit of a mess - except India. Think of it as a T20 space race: one programme is launching rockets, the others are tinkering with propellers.

If the T20 World Cup was played tomorrow, Pakistan would be equal fifth-favourite along with the West Indies at 12-1. Australia, England and South Africa are all way shorter. Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are around 30-1. India, quite obviously, would be favourites.

They’ve got their shit together, and the rest of Asia is really struggling. A while back, even though India were quality, they were with the pack. But since 2022, India has kicked away. And the other Asian teams are lost in the mess.

We looked at the strike rate differential of every team by year, measuring how quickly they scored compared to their opposition. And for a long time, there were better and worse teams, but everyone was within the margins.

Now, India have broken free, and the rest have ended up as par teams, or even worse. They are playing a completely different game to everyone else. They’re reaching for the moon, and other teams are wondering if it’s made of cheese.

T20 is about batting, even when it isn’t. That is where I started, looking for the team with the most rocket fuel. I expected a slow and steady rise for most teams as cricketers hit harder. And I did not find that.

If you look at Pakistan and Sri Lanka, you see that there is a slight upward curve lately, but both have been quicker in the past. Pakistan have had years when they’ve scored quickly, and Sri Lanka aren’t that much faster now than they were a decade back.

In 2010, if you look at the top ten-ranked T20I sides, the strike rate was 115. Four years later, it had risen to 120. This year, it is 139.

There were times when these teams were ahead of the curve. Sri Lanka were striking at 140 in 2018, and yet they haven’t gone above 130 in their last three years while other sides’ scoring rates have gone boom. Pakistan have been slightly quicker under Mike Hesson, but they’re not a fast-scoring team.