George Garton - "If we go for 12 an over, we've done a good job"

Photo: @T10League

George Garton is under no illusions when it comes to the challenges facing a bowler in a ten-over-a-side match. “The shorter the format the more in favour it is for the batsmen and the more the bowlers are used as their cannon fodder!”

The left-arm quick is talking to us from a hotel in the Middle East on a day off during the Abu Dhabi T10, a tournament that makes T20 look like a bowler’s game. Despite the odds being stacked firmly in the batsmen’s favour -  the tournament run-rate currently stands at 12.38 per over – George believes this actually makes things less complicated for the men standing at the top of their mark with ball in hand. “It makes it quite simple in that you know that every ball the batsman is going to try and hit every ball for six. You can execute your skills perfectly and the ball can still go for four and six.

 “It comes down to a process of you making sure you do everything you can up to releasing the ball. Once you’ve released it, there’s nothing you can do about it. You have to take the outcome – good or bad – out of it and just assess whether you did what you could do on that delivery. The batters are incredibly destructive, so on any given day you can go for plenty in an over, as I found out the other night.”

The 23-year-old is referring to the match on Sunday where his team, Bangla Tigers, conceded 162 for 4 against Northern Warriors, thanks largely to a barely believable 89 from 26 balls from West Indian, Nicholas Pooran. George bowled two wicketless overs for 48 runs, but he’s not dwelling on this. He knows it is just part of this mutant form of the game. “You can bowl incredibly well one night but nothing goes in your favour and you end up bowling two overs for 30,” he says. “The next day you might not end up bowling very well, but the batters play the wrong shots or things go in your favour and you end up bowling two overs and get two wickets for eight or ten runs.”

To illustrate his point perfectly, George takes 1 for 8 against Qalandars – bowling extremely well, it must be said - the very next day. 

🗣 “hey siri, show me the perfect delivery”

👏 @george_garton | #AbuDhabiT10 pic.twitter.com/TRowfgCozh

— T10 League (@T10League) February 4, 2021

It’s a philosophical approach and perhaps the only way for a bowler to stop themselves going mad in the heat of the desert. It is another Sussex player who is involved in the tournament that George credits for this way of thinking. “CJ [Chris Jordan] said something last year, and it really helped. He said, ‘You’re supposed to get hit for four and sixes as a bowler in T10. That’s what’s supposed to happen, so any ball that doesn’t go for four or six, you’re winning.’

“You have to take the small positives like that kind of thing and work on understanding when’s the best time for a batter to go for one and, instead of trying to get a wicket, how can I restrict someone to only going for a single?”

This acceptance of going for plenty of runs is illustrated by George’s insight into what a T10 team sees as a good performance in the field. “In T20 we always set a target of going for under 28 [per bowler]. If you go under 28 off your four [overs], then you’ve had a good day. Here, we say if every bowler bowls their two overs at 24 or less then the captain’s happy.

“We’ve seen this year that the scores have been much higher as well. Teams are consistently chasing 12 an over. So, we say as a captain and the bowling unit, if we go collectively for 12 an over or less then we’ve done a good job. It’s a bit strange, because that’s three boundaries an over, which doesn’t seem great, but each team is chasing 120-plus most days!”

In a strange way, does that mean the real pressure is on the batsmen? “The openers and the batters coming in at three and four have to hit the ground running,” George answers. “They have to hit their first few balls for six. There’s no real time for sighters to get your eye in. If you can score a big first innings and put the team chasing under pressure early on, then suddenly the roles reverse, and it is more in the bowlers’ favour than the batters’.”

This is George’s second visit to the T10, following on from his debut at the last edition of the tournament in late 2019, where he was the leading wicket-taker. Times have changed since then, as we are all acutely aware, and that’s made for a few differences out in Abu Dhabi. “Last year everyone was in the same hotel. It was a brilliant atmosphere to rub shoulders off the pitch with everyone.

“This year because of the [coronavirus] restrictions, I think it is two teams to a hotel and you can’t spend any time with them, so it is very isolated and very restricted. You can’t stay after your game to talk to other players. You might be able to sneak in five minutes here and there, but it’s a bit strange this year. It’s a shame really that you can’t talk to other teams and to other players and rub shoulders with people you want to learn from.”

“We get an hour’s pool session a day, which we try and take full advantage of. It’s a really nice hotel, so it’s a shame we can’t use all the facilities. We’re trying to get a bit of tennis going, there’s a few tennis courts here so we’re trying to wrangle a way into those. Like most sportsmen, they bring their PlayStations or Xboxes with them, so there’s a few hours spent – especially in the first few days in isolation – just playing PlayStation, reading a bit and trying to pass the time.”

WATCH: George demystifies the crazy world of T10 cricket 

George is one of four Sussex players involved in the tournament – Ravi Bopara, Chris Jordan and Luke Wright are the others - but his contact with his teammates from back home has been equally limited. “I’ve only seen Wrighty and CJ for five minutes at a time. Maybe we’ll cross paths at the end of a game or when their game finishes and our game starts, but that’s about it. We can’t go to their hotel; they can’t come to ours. It is very restricted, unfortunately.”

Do those restrictions, as well as the mandatory quarantines on arrival, make a cricketer think twice about taking part in overseas tournaments? “I’m a professional cricketer, so I want to play all the time. I can see why lads going from one bubble to another would really struggle. Having only done one, I can see the impact it has, but for me, especially still being a bit inexperienced in the franchise stuff and in life – I am only 23 – I want to play as much as possible. So it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

George departed for the T10 having been living in lockdown like the rest of us. That has an impact on a cricketer’s preparedness for a tournament. “The government allow professional cricketers to still train, so we could still get in the gym and still do the occasional cricket-based session,” he explains. “But it’s definitely tricky and I definitely came out here feeling a bit rusty, not being able to bat and bowl properly [in training]. But it’s part and parcel of the job and you’ve got to just get on with it and be adaptable and be flexible and work around what you’re given.

“Before I came out, it was literally one person in the indoor school at a time. One person would go in the gym, one would go in the indoor school and bowl or field most of the time without a coach. You had to be very independent and learn what you wanted to work on and be self-coaching in that way. It is weird as usually you’ve got a few coaches to bounce your ideas off.”

In the same way that he approaches bowling to destructive batsmen with everything weighted in their favour, George looks for the positives arising from a challenging situation, however.  “I think it was good for the lads, especially the younger lads. It forces them to learn what they need to learn quickly without the aid of a coach which they might fall back on.”

When he gets back to Hove, George will be looking ahead to the English summer as the man in possession of both Sussex’s young player and player of the season awards. What does that mean in terms of his aims and ambitions for the campaign ahead? “I haven’t got too many performance-based goals, because I [always] expect high standards from myself. What I want from next season is to replicate the things from off the park, the stuff that kept me ticking and kept me available for selection in so many games last year. There’s a famous saying, ‘you can’t score any runs in the dug-out’. You can only showcase what you can do on the pitch. For me it’s about making sure I am on the pitch as much as possible so I can showcase what I can do.”