The best of Twenty20, in six balls

Being a relic, I am not a fan of the Super Over – I’d leave the tie, a rare and quite the prefect result, as it is – but I can see why it is so attractive to many, and I would even concede to succumbing to the thrill of the moment.

In the some ways, the Super Over is the acme of Twenty20 cricket. All the elements that makes this format attractive to its followers are distilled and packed into one over. There is both spectacle and drama, and a touch of intrigue. The captains have to make some big decisions about who will bat and, far more importantly, who will bowl; every ball is life and death and, in a twisted sense, even wickets matter; batsmen are at their most primal; and bowlers have to bring in all their guile and skill; and, of course, it lasts only a few minutes. My daughter, who doesn’t have the patience for even Twenty20, would never miss a tie-breaker. And I prefer this infinitely more than the farcical Bowl-out.

And so we sat, with the lasciviousness of the reality TV follower, watching Punjab’s shot at redemption, and indeed their attempt to stay alive in the tournament after both teams had contrived to make it a tie. Punjab should have got a lot more than 136; and Chennai should have walked it. What would have otherwise been remembered as a humdrum match suddenly came alive following two dramatic final overs in which Chennai somehow failed to score 13 runs.

Two sixes and two dismissals later, it took a live-or-die stroke from Yuvraj Singh to win it for Punjab. I don’t remember seeing Yuvraj play a reverse-sweep before, and he didn’t really have to play a such a high-risk stroke at that point because it was only the fourth ball. But having missed the traditional sweep the previous ball, he perhaps felt compelled not to leave it until it was too late.

The way he celebrated, you would have thought Punjab had the won the tournament. But that, in a way, is the essence of a Super Over: everything condensed to the most extreme.