T20's last-ball misstep: Why batters need to run themselves out more often

Afghanistan ended up on the losing side of an incredible double Super Over in the T20 World Cup against South Africa on Wednesday. The incredible drama was underscored by several instances of poor planning and execution on both sides (as is the case with most dramatic endings, in any sport).

One in particular that caught the eye was the final delivery of the first Super Over. The ball was squeezed out to short fine leg, and the Afghanistan batters scampered through for a single before declining a second run.

In the normal course of a game, this would not be out of place at all. There was little chance of the second being completed. In this instance, the throw from the fielder was weak, and there was a slight fumble as wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock attempted to collect it.

Why should teams keep running on the final ball of the innings?

None of this seems particularly significant. In fact, had this not been a Super Over, it might not have been worthy of a spot in the match highlights package.

But it did highlight the single most common misstep committed by T20 teams across the world; they don’t run themselves out enough.

This can be a strange statement to make. After all, what possible reason could a batting side have for intentionally losing wickets?

It’s a simple one. When the wicket has no value, i.e. on the final ball of a limited-overs innings. Batting teams gain nothing in a T20 match by scoring, for example, 160-5 vs 160-6. This means that off the last ball, taking even the most miniscule chance to get 161 has a slight upside, and no downside at all. That makes it something every single team batting first needs to be doing.

In fact, if a boundary is not hit, or there is no dismissal by another method, the explicit aim of the batters in the middle should be for one of them to lose their wicket via run out.

In other words, keep running until one is dismissed.

T20 is a sport which lends itself to discussions of the game turning on a single moment or delivery, sneaking byes and getting a specific batter on strike, or bowlers running batters out at the non-striker’s end; all examples of marginal gains, for an extra run or two.

As far as effects go, attempting to keep running off the final ball will only have a small one – two or three runs at best, if everything goes as planned and batters scampering through puts enough pressure on fielders for them to fumble, misfield, and/or concede overthrows (although, for all anyone knows, this could result in a boundary too).

How have teams performed on the final ball of the innings?

From a public ball-by-ball dataset tracking the outcome of the final delivery of the 20th over, in the first innings of 10,419 men’s T20 matches, roughly 33 per cent see a boundary struck, or a batter dismissed in some other way.

In the remaining instances, the batting team is required to run off the final ball if they want to add to their total – this may be from making contact, or other forms of byes.

From this set of games, the record is woeful across the board. Barely 14 per cent of the time do batters run themselves out off the final delivery.

Read more: England’s T20 World Cup banana skins – a history of close calls and major slip-ups

It is quite likely that in the majority of the “not out” cases, an extra run was suicidal, and simply would not have been completed. But the batters lose nothing by taking the chance, based purely on the hope that there is a mistake of some kind from the fielding side. There is literally nothing to lose.

The single case in which a batter could justifiably turn down a run would be in the event a no-ball is called. This decision comes with a slight delay these days, thanks to the involvement of technology and/or the third umpire.

Batters can gauge this better if they are looking for one off a high full toss, but either way this is quite an extreme edge-case. In the dataset examined here, no-balls have extended the innings only 38 times, or in 0.36 per cent of cases.

Furthermore, wanting to preserve a wicket so that someone can face the extra delivery should not really matter unless a side is nine down, where losing a wicket would mean not even having the chance to face that ball.

Run outs off the final ball of the first innings in men's T20s (where data available)

This understandable conservatism comes through in the data; when a team’s last-wicket pair is batting, they are run out far less frequently than others.

Notably, when a team has lost between six and eight wickets, they are relatively loose with the last-ball running, possibly because hitters batting lower down in the order are already used to their wicket not meaning much – observe the difference between them and the situations that are likely to have more top-order batters involved.

There is, admittedly, another edge-case here which involves the Afghan pair of Gurbaz and Omarzai from the example at the beginning of this piece. Had one of them been dismissed, they would have been ineligible to bat in the second Super Over.

This can be a consideration on occasion (again, extremely rare), but a simple counter is that attempting the run and potentially causing chaos could help avoid a second Super Over in the first place. The wider logic of teams looking to burn a wicket off the final ball still holds.

Admittedly, there has been a slight improvement on this front. Since the start of 2024, the rate of run outs off the final ball is 15.5 per cent, slightly higher than the 14.1 per cent overall. But it still seems like a long way before this kind of thinking becomes mainstream.

Run outs off the final ball of the first innings in men's T20s since 2024 (where data available)

An impediment for this to develop as a tactic is that it needs both batters in the middle to be aware and on board. Even in the ongoing World Cup, a disconnect was on show when India took on the USA.

Suryakumar Yadav hit the ball into the leg side, where it was stopped by a fielder on the boundary. He jogged through for one and did not bother to look up after completing the first run. Meanwhile, India’s No.10, Varun Chakaravarthy, was already halfway down the pitch for a second, leading to a hilarious screenshot.

Image: JioHotstar

This would be recorded in the data as a run out off the final ball, but had both batters been alive to the situation instead of just one, who knows what kind of slip-up the keeper could have made. Of course, this specific incident didn’t matter at all in the final reckoning of the game, but more generally if batting teams want to maximise their resources, going for that hara-kiri run is also part of the equation.

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