Cricket innings break strategy: how a chase is planned

The last ball of the innings is fielded, the players walk off, and a clock starts. Somewhere in the pavilion a laptop is already open with the first innings broken into three columns, and the batter who will face the first delivery of the chase has about eight minutes before he needs to put his pads on.

Cricket innings break strategy is the least visible part of a limited-overs match and one of the most consequential. The interval is where a chasing side converts a number on a scoreboard into a plan with phases, a wicket allowance and a set of decision rules, and where it settles the two questions that decide most chases: what the pitch is actually doing, and how the conditions will differ in two hours' time from how they are now. The length of that interval is fixed by the playing conditions rather than by convenience. A one-day international allows forty-five minutes. A T20 international allows ten, which is not enough time to think, and is why the thinking has to have happened before the first innings ended.

What follows walks through the interval in the order a dressing room uses it. The clock and what the rules do to it, how the first innings is read as evidence rather than as a result, how a target becomes a set of phase sub-targets with wickets attached, how the order gets rearranged, what dew and fading light do to every one of those judgements, and what the fielding side is doing with the same minutes.

• 45Standard ODI interval, in minutes
• 30Reduced ODI interval after significant time lost
• 10Absolute minimum interval the referee may set
• 10Interval in a men's T20 international, in minutes

Durations from the ICC men's ODI playing conditions and the Laws of Cricket. The ODI interval shortens when playing time has already been lost.

The clock, and what the playing conditions do to it

The interval is not a courtesy and it is not elastic. It is written down, and the writing matters because the plan has to fit inside it.

In a one-day international the break runs to forty-five minutes, measured from the umpire's call of Time at the end of the first innings to the call of Play at the start of the second. Two situations shorten it. If playing time has already been lost to weather or delays, the interval is cut: up to fifteen minutes lost takes fifteen minutes off the break, and anything beyond that reduces it to thirty. The match referee has the power to trim it further where the schedule demands, down to a floor of ten minutes below which it cannot go.

There is a separate rule for an innings that finishes early. If the first innings ends before the scheduled interval but by less than half an hour, the break simply happens there and then and the second innings starts ahead of schedule. If it ends more than half an hour early, the sides take a ten-minute break instead and the proper interval happens at its scheduled time, which is why a side bowled out in the thirty-fifth over sometimes finds itself batting again almost immediately.

In a men's T20 international the break is ten minutes, full stop, and the Laws set the same ten minutes between innings in the longer forms of the game. Franchise competitions vary slightly around the T20 figure to accommodate broadcast requirements, and several of them add short in-innings breaks on top, which are a different animal used for a different purpose.

The practical consequence of the difference between forty-five and ten is enormous, and it is the reason the two formats plan in opposite directions. A fifty-over side can genuinely deliberate in the interval. A twenty-over side cannot, so it arrives at the break with three pre-built plans and spends the ten minutes choosing between them.

Reading the first innings as evidence rather than as a result

The first thing a competent chasing side does is put the total to one side. The total is an output. The evidence is in how it was made.

The questions are specific. How much pace did the surface give the quicker bowlers, and did that change between the tenth over and the thirtieth? When did the ball first turn, and did it turn for both spinners or only the one who bowled into the rough? Did the ball come on to the bat or hold up on the batters trying to drive? Which lengths produced boundaries, and which produced dot balls? Where on the ground were the boundaries actually hit, given that grounds are asymmetric and one side of the square is usually shorter than the other?

Two identical totals can require completely opposite chases. A total built on a true surface where the ball came on nicely is a total that can be chased conventionally, with a stable start and acceleration later. The same total on a slow, gripping pitch where every batter struggled to time the ball is a much better total than it looks, and a chasing side that treats it conventionally will find itself six down and behind with the hard scoring still to do.

The other half of this reading is who bowled well and who did not. A chasing side is not facing an average of the opposition attack, it is facing four specific bowlers with a specific number of overs each, and the ones who went for runs in the first innings are not necessarily the ones who will be easiest in the second. A seamer punished on a surface that was still fresh may be far harder to score off once it has slowed. That is the difference between reading a scorecard and reading a match, and the piece on how to read a cricket scorecard properly covers the columns that actually carry the information.

What the pitch verdict has to settle before anything else

The dressing room needs one agreed sentence about the surface before it can do anything with the target, and getting that sentence right is the most valuable thing that happens in the interval.

Surfaces move in predictable directions across a match, and each direction implies a different chase. A pitch that is slowing and gripping will punish a side that leaves its scoring until the last ten overs, because those last ten will be harder than the ones before them. A pitch that started tacky and is drying out will get better to bat on, which argues for patience early and aggression later. A pitch with variable bounce means the risk of the big shot rises through the innings, so a chasing side takes its chances early while the ball is still behaving.

The verdict also has to state whether the pitch is doing what the side expected at the toss. A captain who bowled first on the assumption that the surface would deteriorate and finds that it has not is now chasing on a better pitch than he planned to and should say so out loud, because the plan built that morning is the wrong plan. The counterpart error is worse: assuming the second innings will be like the first because the first is what everybody just watched. The reasoning behind these expectations is set out in the pieces on what a captain is trading at the toss and what different pitch types do over the course of a match.

1. 1The analyst reports firstThe first innings is presented broken down by phase, by bowler and by scoring area, so the discussion starts from what happened rather than from what people remember. This takes two or three minutes and everyone hears the same version.
2. 2The pitch verdict is agreed out loudSomebody who batted or kept states plainly what the surface is doing and which direction it is moving. Ambiguity here contaminates every decision that follows, so the point of saying it aloud is to force disagreement into the open.
3. 3The target becomes phase targetsThe total is divided into blocks that match the fielding restrictions, each with a runs figure and a wickets allowance. The blocks are the plan; the required run rate is only a check on it.
4. 4Conditions are projected forwardDew, light, floodlight transition and any chance of rain are assessed for the two hours ahead rather than for the moment. A side expecting dew plans a different innings from one that is not.
5. 5The order is confirmed or changedThe provisional order is tested against the plan, and any promotion or demotion is decided now rather than at the fall of a wicket. The pair opening is told who takes strike.
6. 6Individual roles are statedEach of the top five is told what his job is in his likely phase, so nobody has to work out on the walk to the middle whether he is meant to be building or attacking.
7. 7The last two minutes are left aloneBatters pad up and get quiet. A dressing room still arguing tactics as the umpires walk out has already lost the benefit of the break.

The recurring sequence in a professional dressing room. In a ten-minute T20 break most of these steps are confirmations of work done earlier.

Turning a target into phases, which is the actual work

A required run rate is a single number that hides everything a batter needs to know, and every serious chasing side replaces it with something better before it goes out.

The method is to split the innings into blocks that match the fielding restrictions, since the restrictions are what change how easy scoring is, and give each block two figures: how many runs the side wants from it, and how many wickets it can afford to lose getting them. The numbers are set so that the plan is comfortably achievable if things go normally and still recoverable if one block goes badly.

The value of this is not arithmetic. It is that it converts a continuous problem into a series of discrete, answerable questions. A batter in the fourteenth over does not need to compute anything; he needs to know whether the side is ahead of or behind the block it is currently in, and what the block after this one is going to ask of him. That is a question he can answer between deliveries. Calculating a revised required rate is not.

The blocks also expose the trap in an apparently comfortable chase. A side needing an even rate throughout is not in a neutral position, because the fielding restrictions make the first block the cheapest runs available in the innings and the middle block the most expensive. A chase that is exactly level after the powerplay is already behind, and phase targets make that visible while there is still time to do something about it.

Overs 1 to 1055runs

Overs 11 to 2570runs

Overs 26 to 4075runs

Overs 41 to 5080runs

An illustrative phase plan constructed to show the shape, not figures from any match. Real splits change with the pitch, the opposition attack and the ground.

Show the numbers

One way a fifty-over target of 280 might be divided

Item	Runs wanted from the phase
Overs 1 to 10	55runs
Overs 11 to 25	70runs
Overs 26 to 40	75runs
Overs 41 to 50	80runs

The wicket budget that runs alongside the runs

Runs are only half of a phase plan, and the half that gets discussed. The wickets allowance is the half that decides whether the plan survives contact.

Every phase gets a number of wickets the side is willing to spend in it, and the totals have to come to ten with something left over. A side that budgets two wickets for the powerplay and loses four has not merely lost two extra players; it has lost the licence to attack later, because the batters now at the crease have to rebuild before anybody can accelerate. This is the mechanism by which chases collapse without any single catastrophic passage of play: the runs stay roughly on schedule while the wickets column quietly runs out, and the last ten overs arrive with nobody left to hit.

The allowance also tells a set batter what he is for. A player who is in and comfortable, in a phase with a wicket allowance already spent, is under an obligation not to get out that overrides his instinct to hit, and telling him that clearly in the interval is worth more than telling him at the fall of the third wicket. How that obligation plays out ball by ball is the subject of the piece on pacing a run chase from the middle, which picks up where the interval leaves off.

20%30%30%20%

• Powerplay allowance2
• Middle overs allowance3
• Final phase allowance3
• Held in reserve2

An illustrative allocation showing how sides think about wickets as a spendable resource. The split changes with the target and the surface.

Show the numbers

A ten-wicket budget spread across a chase

Item	Value
Powerplay allowance	2
Middle overs allowance	3
Final phase allowance	3
Held in reserve	2

Planning against their overs, not against their bowlers

A chasing side is not facing a bowling attack in general. It is facing a finite number of overs from named individuals, and the interval is where those overs get counted.

In a T20 the counting is trivial and the conclusions are sharp. Four bowlers of four overs plus a fifth option is twenty overs, and a chasing side knows exactly how many of them belong to the opposition's best bowler and roughly when a captain will want to use them. That knowledge produces a specific instruction: attack the overs that must be bowled by the weakest option, accept the best bowler's spell, and do not let the innings drift into a position where the last four overs are all being bowled by the two best death bowlers.

In a fifty-over match the counting is looser but the logic holds. Ten overs each from the two main bowlers means twenty overs from bowlers the chasing side would prefer to face, and the plan is built around making sure those twenty are the ones under pressure. A side that has attacked the wrong bowler and finds itself needing eight an over against the best two has usually made its mistake half an hour earlier.

The interval is also where the matchup notes get restated in the specific: which batter goes after which bowler, which spinner a particular player should look to sweep, which seamer's slower ball is worth waiting for. That file is assembled long before the match and confirmed in the break, and the way sides build it is covered in the piece on how cricket teams put their data to work.

Dew, and the plan that flips at the interval

Of all the variables discussed in an interval, dew is the one most likely to change the plan rather than refine it.

Dew wets the ball and the outfield. A wet ball is harder for a fast bowler to hold and swing, close to useless in a finger spinner's hand, and it skids on to the bat rather than gripping, which removes most of what a bowling side has been relying on. It also makes the outfield faster, so shots that were being cut off on the ring start running to the rope. The net effect is that batting gets easier in the second half of an evening, sometimes markedly.

A chasing side that expects dew plans a different innings. It will accept a slower start, protect wickets through the phase when the ball is still dry and doing something, and back itself to score more quickly later than the required rate implies, because the conditions are moving in its favour. That is close to the opposite of the plan it would build on a dry night, where the risk of leaving too much until the end is the primary danger.

Two cautions belong with this. Dew is a forecast, not a fact, and a side that has planned around dew that never arrives has spent its wickets on a phase it will now need them for. And the effect is venue-specific and season-specific rather than universal, so the useful question in the interval is not whether dew exists in general but whether it has arrived at this ground at this time of year in previous matches.

Light, floodlights and the transition nobody plans for

The second lever conditions pull is light, and it works in the other direction from dew.

A day match that finishes in the evening presents the chasing side with a period where natural light is fading and the floodlights are not yet dominant. Sighting the ball is genuinely harder through that transition, and it usually coincides with a phase of the innings where the chasing side had planned to accelerate. A side that has noticed this in the interval will move its acceleration either side of the transition rather than through it, and will tell its batters explicitly that the twenty minutes around dusk are for survival and rotation.

The same applies to a red ball in the longer game and to the pink ball under lights, where the twilight period is a known danger rather than a curiosity. In a limited-overs interval the point is simply that the light in two hours is not the light now, and a plan built on current visibility is a plan built on a condition that will not hold.

Rain, and the interval where the mathematics changes

Where rain is forecast, the interval acquires an additional task, and it is one that changes what a good position looks like.

A chase under a rain threat is not only a chase to a target; it is a chase to stay ahead of a par score at every moment, because a match abandoned after the minimum overs is decided on whether the side is ahead of or behind par at that instant. That gives the batting side a reason to be ahead of the run schedule early even at some cost in wickets, which is the reverse of the usual advice. A side that plans a leisurely start and loses the match to weather in the twenty-fifth over while sitting four runs behind par has been beaten by its own planning.

The interval is where that instruction gets given, along with the reminder that par moves with wickets as well as with overs, so being ahead on runs and eight down is not the safe position it appears to be. The full mechanics of how those numbers are produced are set out in the piece on how Duckworth-Lewis-Stern works and what a par score means.

Rearranging the order, and the last decision made

A white-ball batting order is provisional until the interval ends, and rearranging it is one of the more common uses of the break.

The triggers are consistent. A target that demands early acceleration promotes an attacking player above a builder. A surface that is turning promotes whoever plays spin best and often pushes a left-hander up to break a right-handed sequence. An opposition attack short of one of its main bowlers changes which phase is the vulnerable one and therefore which player should be in at the time. And a target so large that the conventional order cannot reach it justifies a genuine gamble at the top, because the downside of failing by ninety runs rather than by forty is nil.

Sides also confirm the pinch-hitting and floating decisions here rather than at the fall of a wicket, so that the player concerned has had twenty minutes to prepare rather than twenty seconds. Where competition rules allow a substitute to be introduced during the innings, the interval is when the side works out which of its named players is likely to come in and at what stage, a mechanism explained in the piece on how the impact player rule changes a team's shape. The general principles of ordering a batting line-up are set out in the piece on how a batting order is constructed and why.

The last decision in almost every interval is the smallest one: which of the two openers takes the first ball. It is not trivial. Facing the first delivery of a chase against a bowler who has just watched his side post a total is a specific job, and sides give it to whichever opener is better equipped for that particular bowler rather than to whoever happens to be listed first.

What the fielding side does with the same minutes

The defending side is not idle, and its interval has a different structure because its plan is more constrained.

It reviews its own innings first, and specifically whether the total is above or below what it judged par on this surface. That judgement sets the tone of everything after it. A side defending an above-par total plans to bowl dry and let the required rate do the work. A side defending a below-par total has to take wickets and will attack from the first over, accepting that it cannot win by containment.

It then fixes its over allocation. Which bowler opens, how many overs are held back for the final phase, and what the trigger is for using the best bowler early rather than saving him. That decision has to be made now, because a captain improvising it in the eighth over under pressure tends to make it badly.

And it confirms the fielding plan for the specific batters it will face, including who fields where when each of them is on strike. Ten minutes spent settling that is ten minutes not spent shouting about it in the eleventh over.

There is one further item on the defending side's list that the batting side has no equivalent of, and it concerns the ball. A captain about to defend a total on a dry surface wants to know whether his side intends to keep one side of the ball shiny for later reverse movement, or to let it scuff evenly and rely on the surface. That decision has to be made before the first over of the chase, because it dictates how every fielder handles the ball for the next two hours, and a side that has not agreed it ends up with a ball that is useful for nothing in particular.

The in-innings version of the same conversation

The interval is not the only scheduled pause, and the shorter ones that occur during an innings are used for a narrower version of the same work.

Several T20 competitions require a short break part way through each innings, usually a couple of minutes, and the drinks break in a fifty-over innings serves the same function without a rule mandating it. Neither is long enough to rebuild a plan. What they are long enough for is a correction: confirming which of the phase targets the side is behind, naming the bowler to be attacked in the next block, and telling a set batter whether his job has changed.

The reason these pauses matter is that a plan made in the interval was made without knowing how the pitch plays in the second innings, and the second innings is frequently different. Dew may have arrived earlier than expected, the surface may have gripped more than the first innings suggested, or the opposition captain may have used his best bowler in a phase nobody predicted. A side that treats its interval plan as fixed for two hours has confused planning with commitment. The pauses exist so the plan can be edited without anybody having to shout across a boundary rope.

The corresponding risk is over-correction. A chasing side that rewrites its phase targets at every break has effectively abandoned the plan and is improvising with extra steps, which produces exactly the pattern of frantic acceleration followed by collapse that phase planning was designed to prevent. The discipline is to change the plan only when the evidence contradicts the assumption it was built on, rather than when the last two overs went badly.

The interval in Test cricket, which is a different problem

The ten minutes between innings in the longer game does much less work, and the reason is worth stating because it clarifies what the white-ball interval is actually for.

A Test side changing innings is not being handed a target it must reach at a rate. Except in the fourth innings, it is being handed a session structure and an open-ended question about how long to bat and how quickly. The decisions that would fill a limited-overs interval, the phase splits and the wicket budgets, do not exist in the same form, because the constraint is time across days rather than balls across an afternoon.

What does get settled in those ten minutes is narrower and mostly about the immediate passage. Which bowler takes the new ball at which end, whether the openers are facing a session of forty minutes before an interval and should therefore simply survive it, and what the weather is expected to do to the remaining playing time. A fourth-innings chase is the one case where a Test interval starts to resemble the limited-overs version, because a target and a finite number of overs now exist, and even then the wicket budget dominates the run schedule rather than sitting alongside it.

The comparison matters for a practical reason. Almost everything described in this piece is a response to a constraint that only limited-overs cricket imposes: a fixed number of deliveries. Remove that and most of the interval's work evaporates, which is a reasonable way of understanding why the work exists at all.

What to watch when the players come back out

The plan made in the interval is legible from the first over of the chase if you know where to look.

Watch how the openers treat the first two overs. A pair that takes no risk at all against a bowler offering little is a side that has budgeted a slow start and expects conditions to improve, which usually means dew. A pair attacking immediately on a decent surface is a side that has decided the pitch will get worse or that the total is beyond a conventional chase.

Watch the fielding captain's opening field. A ring set for catching in the first over from a side defending a large total is a captain who does not believe his total is large, and he is telling you he thinks the pitch is easier than the scorecard suggests.

Watch for a promotion. A player arriving at number three who was not there in the previous match is the clearest single signal that the interval produced a decision rather than a confirmation, and the reason is nearly always either the surface or a specific bowler.

And watch the scoreboard at the end of the first block rather than the run rate throughout. A side that reaches the end of its powerplay on schedule with its wickets intact has executed the first paragraph of a plan that was written while the ground staff were still dragging the covers away. More on how chases, totals and the decisions around them work sits in the cricket section, and the full run of explainers across every sport is in the blog archive.