Looking forward to what @penultima_thule has to say, but my take on it is this:
T20 and ODI are, as mentioned, limited over matches. In First class and Test (red ball) the batting team can theoretically go on as long as they like - there’s nothing in the rules to stop a team batting for 5 days if they’re good enough and stupid enough to try. But although 5 days is stupid, piling up runs over 2 or even 2.5 days is a winning strategy. This makes a huge difference to what is needed and expected of batters.
In limited overs, the clock is always ticking. You only get so many chances to score and then you’re done. In 50-over games, teams are looking to score 350+ (top teams in ODIs have their sights set on 400+). Every over that goes by with a score of <5 just adds pressure to the batters. In T20, with batters aiming for 200-ish, every ball that isn’t scored off is wasted. When T20 started off, the mantra for batters was to go in, get themselves settled and then start scoring. Now batters know that they have to be scoring as soon as they go in.
The value of a wicket is different too. With limited overs, you won’t often see a team all out. Especially in T20, a batter who scores 30 of 15 balls and goes out has done more to help the team win than a batter who stays in scoring 50 off 70 balls. 50 over isn’t quite as intense but the logic still holds - the clock is ticking, there are other batters behind you, saving your wicket by not scoring runs doesn’t advance your cause.
The final difference is simply hte effect of time. OVer 4 or 5 days conditions change. Limited over batters won’t see much change in the pitch. But day 4 or 5 pitch is a very different environment from a day 1 pitch. Ditto, bowlers are always fresh in limited overs, not so in Tests.
The upshot is that in limited overs, the best time to score is now. Get bat on ball, get busy between the wickets or start mowing some sixes. In red-ball, the best time to score might well be this evening, or tomorrow - when the bowlers are tired, the ball is older, you’ve got your eye in and the pitch has calmed down. So batters who have adapted their game for limited overs will have the following characteristics:
- Always looking to score
- Unused to leaving the ball/knowing where their off-stump is.
- Technically well-developed scoring shots, not so practised at defensive techniques
- Unused to 4/5 day pitches
- No experience of building an innings
- Used to a very different risk/reward ratio
- Plan to dominate bowlers by scoring off them, not by grinding them down.
There can be times in Tests when this approach is what’s needed - it can’t all be chanceless 2 runs per over stuff. But particularly for the top order, the above approach is completely unhelpful. An opening batter facing a fresh bowlers with hard new ball on an uncertain pitch is not there to score runs. Their job is to “see off the new ball” - to face enough deliveries that the shine comes off the ball and the bowlers get a little tired, a little frustrated. They shouldn’t even be thinking about their score for the first 10 overs, hard though that is. It’s balls faced that count. The runs will come if you’re still in to get them. When an opener gets a century, you will typically see that the first 50 runs came from 120-150 balls, the next 25 from 50 and the last 25 from 20-30. That scoring pattern just isn’t an option in limited overs, so when players trained and adapted to white ball cricket are asked to play red-ball cricket they have to adjust their game enormously.
For example, on of the main criticisms of England’s top order is that they play shots they don’t need to. A lot of early wickets fell to balls that were outside off stump and could easily have been left. Instead we see the impulsive swing, the nick, the catch. This is partly about the skill of judging the line of the ball accurately, but more about the mentality.
