Cricket: Pinch Hitters Losing Value?

The man pictured above is Sri Lanka's Sanath Jayasuria. One of the fiercest hitters the game has ever seen would have never existed had it not been for the creative genius of Arjuna Ranatunga (ex-Sri Lanka captain).

Jayasuria was drafted into the Sri Lankan team as a backup bowler who could bat a little down the order, When given an opportunity in the nets, Jayasuria smashed the ball around, provoking Ranatunga to try him as 'pinch hitter' and boy oh boy, has it worked!

The 38-year-old has played 411 ODIs, scoring 12,310 runs with 25 scores in excess of a century but that's not all. Amazingly, Jayasuria has hit more sixes than anyone in Limited overs International cricket. His tally has reached 249 sixes.

His closest rival is Pakistan's dynamic allrounder, Shahid Afridi, who is known as a 'six hitting' specialist. "Boom Boom Afridi," as he is called by crowds over India and Pakistan, is just two sixes behind Jayasuria at 247.

Remarkably, Afridi has played 246 innings in ODIs, which indicates he has more sixes than one per innings. Afridi has a similar story. He was drafted into the side in Nairobi, Kenya, to face Sri Lanka as a leg spinner. Afridi was tried by the skipper, Wasim Akram and he scored the still standing record of the fastest century in 37 balls.

Having said that, it is not my point in this article. My point is that with induction of T20 Cricket, are the pinch hitters gaining value or losing value?

Forget Test Cricket's reputation, I'm talking about T20 Cricket which is tailor made for the big hitters, but there was a time when Ricardo Powell for the West Indies, Gorton Greenidge and Sir Vivian Richards used to bat up the order to increase the run rate.

However, in T20 Cricket, everyone is looking for 7-8 runs per over at least, and the likes of Salman Butt and Gautam Gambhir are taking up the likes of Adam Gillchirst and Sanath Jayasuria.

We don't see a No. 7 'slogger' sent in at No. 3 to increase the run rate anymore. The last time that happened was when Saurav Ganguly tried it with Irfan Pathan, Wasim Akram tried it with Abdul Razzaq, and Shaun Pollock tried it with Justin Kemp.

Is it because everybody's expected to maintain the T20 style even in ODIs? Can we no longer see the Symonds and Albie Morkel's of today coming up the order?

Is it the fault of T20 Cricket? Kaluwithrana and Jayasuria used this master technique to win Sri Lanka the 1996 World Cup. Is this technique too old for modern day cricket?