On Saturday, these breaks made the cheerleaders work overtime, forced the DJ to dish out Jai Ho a few more times, and allowed the fourth umpire to make a public appearance with towels and drinks. But at a very basic level, it seemed to suddenly rob the T20 format of the fuel its supposed to chug on — non-stop excitement.

For a format that’s about thinking on your feet, soaking in the beauty of mindless hitting, peppered with lots of blink-and-you-miss situations, and quick changeovers with batsmen rushing in to take guard, a break to the players to plan their next move seems horribly out of place, especially while sitting in the stadium.

Little difference

On the first day, these ‘strategy breaks’ made little difference to the teams before or after the seven-and-a-half minute intervals. The Mumbai Indians were dominating before and after the break in the afternoon; Bangalore were down in the dumps in the first 10, and didn’t do much different in the next set. The players were merely using the breaks to catch their breath, allowing seniors such as Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid to feel more at ease with the format as they played well to score half-centuries.

“It was good for us in this match. But when a team is going great guns, they wouldn’t want a strategy break in between,” Tendulkar said later. His Chennai counterpart MS Dhoni felt that perhaps, with time, these breaks could be used better by teams. “It’s too early to say anything now. It’s coming at an important time of the game, and can break the momentum of the batsmen. Hopefully teams will get used to it at a later stage and make some use of it,” he said.