Rahul Dravid believes T20 cricket has helped batsmen enhance their skills

Indian batting legend Rahul Dravid said that the T20 format has helped the batsmen develop their skills much better than any other format and believes the not-so-serious nature of the shortest format of the game has allowed the likes of South Africa’s AB de Villiers to expand their batting vocabulary to unbelievable levels.

Despite being one of the most technically correct batsmen to have ever played the game, The Wall, as Dravid is affectionately referred to by his fans, was a success in the T20 format as well as he showed with his performances for the now-suspended Rajasthan Royals franchise in the IPL.

Speaking on the second episode of ESPNcricinfo Talking Cricket to be aired on Friday night on SONY ESPN, he said that it was more or less acceptable to the fans and team management alike that batsman are more likely to fail than score big in the T20 format.

"We are more accepting of failure, I think, in T20 cricket than we are in any other form of the game," Dravid said. "When a batsman takes risks and plays a paddle sweep or a reverse sweep or all the kinds of shots that they play, you're more likely to view it with a certain degree of acceptance than you would, say, in a Test match or in one-day cricket.

“This has given batsmen freedom to try and experiment with these things more and they're getting better and better at it."

Taking the example of De Villiers, Dravid said that the wide array of shots that the South African is able to execute on the field has been helped largely by the freedom allowed in the 20-over-format.

"He's (De Villiers) also had so many opportunities to fail, to learn from them and to keep refining his batting technique for T20," Dravid said. "Apart from the IPL, he gets other opportunities to practice and experiment with that, and if you keep trying something and you keep failing and learning from it, you are going to get better at it, and that's what happened with batting techniques.

“People have been allowed to take a few more risks. They keep doing that over and over again and they get better and better at it."

Dravid offers his sympathy to the bowlers

Offering his sympathy to the bowlers, especially the fast bowling type, Dravid said that batsman are able to practice in the nets for hours on end with the help of bowling machines, while the bowlers are unable to do so due to the physical exhaustion that kicks after bowling a few overs.

"I think the very nature of bowling is such that you are limited physically in the amount you can do," he said. "It's not that you can go on. You hear a batsman batting for an hour, two hours. They can set up bowling machines to mimic certain kinds of balls and they can go on practising. You can't obviously go on bowling for two hours, two-and-a-half hours, three hours every day because you're going to get injured or you're going to break down at some time.

“So, the opportunities for bowlers to work on their skills is limited physically, by the physical demands and the nature of the job that they are doing. Whereas batsmen, I think, have a little bit of a leeway because they are able to push themselves physically and practice a lot more."

Often being handicapped by being forced to bowl on batting-friendly wickets, Dravid advised the cricket administrators to take steps to provide much-needed assistance to the bowlers before the true nature of a contest between bat and ball becomes extinct in the game.

"I see that as one of the major challenges of T20 cricket," he said. "What we don't want is every score to become a 200, 200-plus score, where it's always about power-hitting skills. We want to bring the skills of cricket. We want them on show even in a T20 game.

“We want somebody to, even if it's for two overs, you want somebody to negotiate a difficult spell, you want to see someone's ability against the turning ball and how he negotiates that and how he's still able to score at seven-eight runs an over against a good spinner on a track that assists the spinner as well.

“So, I think we need that balance. I think otherwise you just might put up bowling machines and see who hits it further."