The art of batsmanship has scaled new heights in the last five years. Run-rates in all formats are soaring (England’s Test runrate has recently jumped 25 per cent higher, and in ODIs they set a world-record total of 444 for 3 against Pakistan at Trent Bridge in 2016 and regularly rattle along at seven an over). Prompted chiefly by T20, new shots are constantly being unfurled. Batting has become like social media – so many ways to express yourself on so many different_platforms.
Test-match run-scoring, you could say, is like old fashioned letter-writing. Handcrafted, painstakingly done, open-ended. No time or space constraints. One-day batting is closer to Instagram: there is a time/space limit but lots of scope and tools to create your own colourful story. T20 is more like Twitter: short and punchy. For 120 possible balls read 140 characters.