There's a growing realisation around T20s now that bowlers can only do so much. We watch them and try to judge them not on outcomes but processes. And this typically means we ask if they bowled to their field. You set a field for the short ball and bowled accordingly and still got hit? Rough luck. It's just what happens to bowlers now. You set your field for the short ball and then went full and got smacked? How dare you.
Sometimes, though, it can pay to not bowl to your field.
Pat Cummins did this with spectacular consequences on Wednesday night. Before running up to bowl the final ball of the first over of the Punjab Kings (PBKS) chase of 236, the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) captain changed his field. He pulled deep third into the 30-yard circle, to short third, and pushed mid-on back to long-on.
The other fielder on the boundary was deep square-leg, so this was a field for a full ball at the stumps. Or a short ball at the body, but with a wafer-thin margin for error because fine leg was inside the circle.
It was certainly not a field for the short ball slanted across the left-hand batter and finishing wide of off stump.
But this is what Cummins bowled. Short, dug into the pitch, finishing at just above shoulder height and well outside Priyansh Arya's off stump. If Arya had uppercut or ramped it over backward point or short third, the TV commentators and every viewer in the world may have been up in arms about how bad a ball this was.
Instead, Arya went for the pull, mis-controlled it, and was caught by Eshan Malinga sprinting and tumbling to his left from deep square-leg. Cummins, arms aloft, broke into the knowing grin of a man who had executed a well-worked bluff.
Cummins must have known this was a risky ball to bowl. But pre-match analysis or instinct honed over all his years playing this sport must have told him this was a risk worth taking.
The data, if he had looked at it, may have told him something like this. The pull had been Arya's most used and most productive shot against pace in IPL 2026. Before that ball from Cummins, he had played it 19 times and scored 68 runs, according to ESPNcricinfo data, while only being dismissed once. He had only played the cut eight times, and the uppercut just once. If Cummins bent his back and got the ball climbing high enough, he may have reckoned Arya would go for the pull regardless of line. Sometimes, a batter can get into a rhythm playing certain shots, and a clever bowler can use that against them.
Particularly if that clever bowler also has Cummins' height, pace, and ability to pound the pitch with his short ball. With the bonus ingredient of that beyond-the-perpendicular release to exaggerate the angle away from the left-hand batter.
On another day, all these things may have come together just as well as they did on Wednesday, and Arya may have reacted differently. Or played the same shot and executed it better. Or mis-executed it in a different way - a top-edge flying over the keeper or short fine leg for six, perhaps. The bowler has no control over these outcomes.
But when you are bowling in the powerplay to a batter like Arya, it's imperative that you try and get him out early. Wickets are often overvalued in T20s, but dismissing an in-form, high-impact player like Arya early, particularly in the powerplay, is massive. To that end, it may very well be worth risking getting uppercut for six if you sense that the batter might look to pull you instead.
"Not much has worked in the powerplay for any team, really, so we tried to be a bit more proactive today," Cummins said during the post-match presentation. "Had our plans, but didn't have many other options, so I thought I'd try a bouncer, and fortunately it came off tonight."
Did he make a conscious attempt to bluff Arya with his field change? "Yeah, I tried to move the field, pretend a bit more was happening than there actually was."
On another day, Cummins may have ended up getting hit for six off that ball, ended up with 0 for 54 rather than 2 for 34, and ended up getting interviewed not as Player of the Match but captain of the losing team. On this day, he showed the IPL the power of the bluff.