In a 60-ball innings there is no time to settle and nowhere to hide a weak bowler. Ten editions on, T10 has a logic of its own, and parts of it look increasingly familiar to T20 sides.
Eoin Morgan, who captained Kerala Kings to the first Abu Dhabi T10 title and England to the 2019 ODI World Cup, has described the difference simply. In T20 cricket, the decisive phase is usually the second half of the innings. In T10, it is the start.
That reversal is where T10 tactics begin. Each side bats for ten overs. The powerplay lasts three, with only two fielders allowed outside the circle, and five can go back after that. No bowler may bowl more than two overs, so every team needs at least five bowlers, and a captain cannot hide a weak one for long. A match takes about 90 minutes.
Knowing the target has also counted for more than in longer formats. In the tournament's first two seasons, the side batting second won around seven matches in ten. With only 60 balls to work with, a side batting first has to guess what a par score is, and the side chasing does not.
Batting orders have become fluid. Mushtaq Ahmed, who coached Deccan Gladiators to their third title in 2024, has described keeping four or five batters padded up at once, ready to be sent in according to the state of the game rather than a fixed order.
The scoring has kept climbing. The fastest fifty in the tournament's history came off 12 balls, from Mohammad Shahzad in 2018, a mark later matched by Chris Gayle and the UAE's Muhammad Waseem. Chris Lynn's unbeaten 91 off 30 balls was the highest score when he made it in 2019. By 2024 the record belonged to Tom Kohler-Cadmore, with 96, until Sherfane Rutherford made the competition's first hundred that November, 103 not out off 40 balls for Northern Warriors against UP Nawabs, with ten sixes. His side still lost by nine wickets as Andre Fletcher and Rahmanullah Gurbaz took UP Nawabs home with five balls left. Last season, Tim David hit 38 sixes, seven more than the previous best for a single edition.
For bowlers, the format demands nerves as much as skill. Batters attack from the first ball, spinners especially, and two good overs from one batter can decide a match.
That should have made spin a liability, but it has not worked out that way. Wanindu Hasaranga, whom Mushtaq worked with at Gladiators, took 21 wickets at 9.28 in 2021 and was named player of the tournament. Left-arm spinner Akeal Hosein was player of the tournament in 2023 and took a hat-trick that year. Afghanistan leg-spinner Qais Ahmad sits among the leading wicket-takers in the tournament's history, alongside two seamers, Dwayne Bravo and Naveen-ul-Haq. Of the nine hat-tricks in the tournament's history, four were taken by spinners: Shahid Afridi, Pravin Tambe, Adil Rashid and Hosein.
The pressure lands on captains too. There is little time to think, and the format pushes sides to keep taking risks. Morgan has said the hardest part of captaincy in T10 comes after a gamble fails, when a captain has to keep backing his players to take the next one.
His most useful observation was about what T10 is for. A T10 match, in his view, exposes the two moments of a T20 game that matter most, the powerplay and the death overs. It is close to a T20 game with the middle overs taken out, so every phase is a high-pressure phase.
Scoring rates in T20 have risen sharply in recent years. Nobody can prove how much of that, if any, came from T10. What is clear is that the shorter game rewards the habits T20 coaches now ask for, such as attacking from the first ball and choosing bowlers for specific matchups.
The tenth edition, under way since November 7, with the final on November 20, has six squads that include Andre Russell, Nicholas Pooran, Phil Salt and Kieron Pollard. Over ten editions, records in this tournament have rarely lasted long.
Also read: How Abu Dhabi became the home of cricket's fastest format
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