Promote the batter who can hit straight, not hard

Batting order decisions keep chasing raw power when the shot that beats an inner ring is the one down the ground.

Send a man up the order to attack and the selection instinct is to pick the one who hits it furthest. I think that is usually wrong, and the reason is geometry rather than machismo. The fielding restriction you are trying to exploit is the ring, and the ring has a gap at long on and long off that a straight hitter can find with a low risk shot while a cross batted hitter has to clear a boundary rider to score.

Hitting straight means the bat swings along the line of the ball. The margin for error in timing is large, because a slightly early or late connection still sends the ball forward rather than up. Hitting across the line means the bat crosses the line of the ball at an angle, so the same timing error produces a top edge, and the fielder at deep midwicket exists precisely for that mistake.

Which means the straight hitter converts more of his intent into runs, and his failures are less catastrophic. A mistimed straight drive is a single. A mistimed pull is a catch.

There is a reason teams do not do this. The straight hitter is less exciting and his sixes are less memorable, and there is a persistent belief in the sport that aggression means a certain kind of violence. Also, straight hitting requires a stride and a full swing, and many players who have grown up on short formats have shortened their swing to generate bat speed in a small arc, which suits the pull and the slog sweep and not much else.

The bowlers know all this, obviously. Against a straight hitter you bowl wide, and against a cross batted one you bowl straight and full, and a good attack will do both within an over. So the argument is not that one shot beats bowling forever. It is that the straight option forces a bowler off his best line, and once he is bowling wide of off stump to a right hander he has surrendered the stumps, which means the batter can stop worrying about being bowled.

That last point is the real prize. A batter who does not fear the stumps plays a completely different innings from one who does, and you can hear it in the sound of the bat.