I’ve been on a mission, scouring T20 scorecards from across the globe, analysing every one of the 171,268 innings in Men’s T20 history, in search of the absolute worst of the worst. I’ve managed to whittle it down to an inglorious bottom 5.
What hallmarks of horror am I looking for? Botched chases, boundaryless marathons, Gavaskian tributes to the act of refusing to move the game along. I’ve decided not to consider some of the statistical nightmares from certain lower level international mismatches. There was a lad who once hit 13 off 46 for Sierra Leone in a nine wicket loss to Nigeria and bless his heart, he doesn’t belong here.
#5: Tillakaratne Dilshan, RCB vs Pune Warriors, IPL 2013
Tillakaratne Dilshan was a marvel of a white ball batter who innovated the game in a way few have ever managed. He was not at his pioneering best in a famous IPL game in 2013, where he opened the batting in the first innings and chugged through the powerplay for 10 off 20 balls featuring seventeen dot balls.
After patting back six dots in the final over of powerplay, Dilshan treated the Bengaluru crowd to a few singles and a couple of fours before hitting Luke Wright to cover in the 14th over for a glacial 33 off 36.
There’ll be times you can walk back to the pavilion after making that sort of score and tell your teammates that runs are really hard to be had out there, but that’s harder to argue when the lad at the other end is 127 off 48 at the point of your dismissal.
When Dilshan took zero runs off that sixth over, Chris Gayle had already raised his bat for a blistering 17 ball 50, plundering 28 runs from a Mitchell Marsh over, 29 from an Aaron Finch over and 28 from an Ali Murtaza over en route to a mammoth 175* that stands as a record to this day. There can be little greater shame than making it two thirds of a way through a T20 innings and being outscored 5 times over by your opening partner.
RCB managed to reach 263 — a world record total up until 2019 — despite Dilshan’s best efforts to clog up the powerplay and offer up more dot balls than all his teammates put together, making him the only player worthy of a spot on this list despite “contributing” to a win.
#4: Paul Horton, Rhinos vs Tuskers, Stanbic Bank T20 (Zimbabwe) 2011
When the Matabeleland Tuskers filled out their overseas allocation for their 2010 T20 campaign they focussed their efforts on filling the top three spots in their batting order. They plundered Lancashire for the twin talents of Tom Smith and Paul Horton, and complemented the duo with a similar calibre signing in the shape of Chris Gayle.
Tuskers raced to 3 wins from their first 3 games before their encounter with Rhinos, in which captain Horton joined Gayle at the crease early in the first innings when Tom Smith was run out for 2. By the time the innings was done both Gayle and Horton were unbeaten having faced 59 and 58 balls respectively, superstar Gayle having hit seven fours and eight sixes on his way to 109*, and Horton hitting… two fours and finishing on 47*.
Horton hit his second and final boundary in the 15th over from his 40th delivery, adding a miserable 15 from 18 balls in the death overs and walking off the park one down with 8 batting options left twiddling their thumbs.
Not content with this heinous act of batsmanship, Horton the captain then asked part time options Smith and Gayle to bowl six of the final seven overs in the run chase, which (obviously) went wicketless for sixty five runs. Before those final seven the game was very much in the balance with Rhinos needing nearly eleven runs an over. By the time Gary Ballance of all people was dismissed in the penultimate over, having smashed Smith and Gayle to all corners, Gayle was thrown the ball and asked to defend just five runs from the final over, which he swiftly failed to do.
#3: Zander de Bruyn, Surrey vs Kent, Friends Life T20 2011
Here’s a fun fact about Zander de Bruyn, of all players to bat in one hundred T20s at an average of at least 29, no-one has a worse strike rate than his 106.42. No-one else is even below 110. He hit one in every ten balls he faced to the boundary over the course of his career; an average that was worsened on a June evening in Beckenham in 2011.
With Steven Davies providing a quick start for his Surrey side and Rory Hamilton-Brown and Jason Roy falling cheaply, de Bruyn came to the crease at 38/3 in the fifth over and powered all the way through to the innings end, facing 45 deliveries for an astonishing twenty five not out.
He batted for fifty five minutes and hit no boundaries. In a T20. As a number 5. You must be thinking that 45 balls and no boundaries must be some kind of record for a T20 but dear reader let me tell you this, it’s not even Zander de Bruyn’s record for longest boundaryless innings: he has a 46 baller he hit for Warriors in South Africa in 2007.
Tom Maynard’s glittering 76 was ultimately in vain, as Kent chased down their 151 target with ease, the chase effectively done after the thirteenth over. Surrey probably felt that they’d left a few runs out there.
#2: Dane Cleaver, Central Districts vs Otago, Super Smash 2016
There was a run-fest in New Plymouth in December 2016. Otago batted first and skipper Hamish Rutherford pummelled a 50 ball 106, ably supported by a quick 50 from other opener Anaru Kitchen and a three ball, sixteen run cameo from recent Test debutant Michael Bracewell. Every member of the Otago lineup struck at at least 163.
Central Districts’ opening partnership George Worker and Mahela Jayawardene had reached 72 by the time the former was dismissed from the final ball of the powerplay. Jayawardene went on to record a 56 ball 116, putting on a big partnership with Tom Bruce who made 61 off 29. Every member of the Central Districts lineup recorded a strike rate of at least 160.
That was, until Jayawardene was dismissed from the first ball of the 19th over, leaving Bruce with the challenge of hitting 21 runs to win from the final 11 balls, alongside the incoming number 5.
Enter Kane Williamson’s cousin, wicketkeeper Dane Cleaver. On an evening in which runs had flown freely from the bat of every man to step to the wicket, where a chase of 250 had seemed plausible, if not likely, from the outset, Cleaver and a very set Tom Bruce required less than 2 runs per ball to see home an incredible victory.
Cleaver faced 7 of the remaining 11 balls and was run out off the final one, scoring just five runs and condemning Central Districts to an agonising one run defeat. If he had simply managed a run a ball he would have seen them home, instead this innings stands today as the highest ever 2nd innings total by a losing team.
#1: Jacques Rudolph, Titans vs Cape Cobras, Standard Bank Pro20 (South Africa) 2011
Some extensive research went into selecting our winner of the prestigious award for worst T20 innings of all time. I went through every innings ever batted and asked the question, how much better or worse was this innings than if the batter had faced the same number of balls and scored at the match-average Strike Rate.
If you sort this metric positively some of the finest innings of all time spring to the top: Gayle’s aforementioned 175*, Brendon McCullum’s 158*, Graham Napier’s 152*, Shreyas Iyer’s 147, Zeeshan Kukikhel’s famous 137 for Hungary against Austria earlier this year.
If you sort it the other way, one train wreck clambers over the rubble into view. The 2nd leg of the 2011 South African T20 semi final between Titans and Cape Cobras, with Titans facing elimination having lost the first leg.
Titans batted first and their 4, 5 and 6 powered them to a strong 222/4 on a good Centurion wicket. Farhaan Berhardien muscled 69 from 33, Albie Morkel blasted 71 from 27 and David Wiese mashed 30 from just 10 balls to close the innings out.
When the match was over and the soon-to-be-champion Cape Cobras marched off the field in celebration — quick 50s from Richard Levi, Dane Vilas and Owais Shah enough to see them home in the final over — the defeated Titans must have looked back at their first innings efforts and wondered if they could have made better use of the forty-four balls opener Jacques Rudolph swallowed up in order to make his 40.
Here’s the maths: in a 220 plays 220 runfest the overall match strike rate was a whopping 180. Rudolph, batting for more than a third of his side’s deliveries, had a strike rate of 91. Had he instead gone at that match average strike rate he would have made 79 runs from his 44 balls, meaning his tranquil ball striking cost his team -39 runs in a do-or-die knockout game, making it mathematically the worst innings in T20 history.
