A curious bit of Twenty20 history unfolded at Bay Oval on Sunday. Northern Districts, stuck in first gear against Otago’s spinners, took the drastic – and completely legal – step of retiring two batters out in consecutive overs. The gamble worked. Their late-order hitters pulled the match level, the sides walked off with a tie, and the scorebook noted the first time in men’s T20 cricket that two retire-outs had come in the same innings.
Jeet Raval, trying to force the pace but stuck on 23 from 28 deliveries, was the first to give way at the start of the 17th over. One over later rookie Xavier Bell followed, having crawled to 9 off 13. In came Ben Pomare and Scott Kuggeleijn; both launched their very first balls for six and the mood shifted in an instant.
By the time Danru Ferns took the last over ND still needed 19, a tall order even on a true Mount Maunganui pitch. Ferns began with a shoulder-high full toss – a beamer in anyone’s language – that Tim Pringle scuffed for a single. Kuggeleijn, sensing his moment, muscled three boundaries from the next five deliveries. Three needed off the final ball: Ferns went round the wicket, speared in a yorker and limited the damage to two. Scores level, handshakes all round. Kuggeleijn’s 34 not out came off just 12 balls, a strike-rate north of 280.
“I think it’s probably just happening on the fly,” Volts keeper-batter Max Chu admitted on television when quizzed about the retirements. “You always feel a little bit bad because they’re not trying to slow the game down. I actually thought it was probably credit to our spinners. I thought Ben [Lockrose] bowled beautifully, Troy [Johnson] on debut bowled beautifully. And yeah, through that middle phase I think we really made the game hard for ND.”
For all the novelty, the tactic has precedent. In the 2022 Vitality Blast Carlos Brathwaite and Samit Patel each retired out, though in different innings of a rain-reduced shoot-out. R Ashwin famously pulled the move in the IPL, and more recently Gulf Giants benched a tiring Max Holden in the ILT20 so that Shimron Hetmyer could finish the job. The logic is straightforward: in modern T20, wickets are cheap; dot balls are expensive.
Northern Districts certainly felt the numbers were on their side. Raval’s strike-rate of 82 and Bell’s 69 were dragging the innings. With only four overs left it was worth sacrificing two wickets on paper to get extra fire-power in the middle. Pomare’s 20 off 10 and Kuggeleijn’s late burst justified the call.
The result leaves both teams with two points apiece. Under Super Smash playing conditions there is no Super Over in group matches; only the elimination final and grand final are permitted the extra shoot-out.
Otago, for their part, might still feel upbeat. Lockrose’s left-arm spin, 2-0-9-1, and the debut overs from part-timer Johnson tied ND in knots for long enough to force that risky decision. Captain Hamish Rutherford will probably take that.
Northern Districts, meanwhile, head to their next fixture knowing the ploy works – but also aware that asking the middle order to rescue things every night is flirting with trouble.
Messy? Absolutely. Effective? Just about. And the law book, for now, says it’s perfectly fine.
