I previously wrote about the useless mention of minutes spent by a batsman in Twenty20 cricket. I now feel that recording maidens is also becoming unnecessary, not just in Twenty20, but even in one-day cricket. For example, today in the India-West Indies, the Indian innings had a solitary maiden out of 50 overs.

ODI batsmen are also the most likely to play in Twenty20. With the Twenty20 mentality to take something off every ball and conceding a maiden is unthinkable, I think we are entering an era where maidens will be extremely rare. In the past, batsmen have been content to play out even average bowling at the fall of a wicket. In the future, they may be as rare as hat tricks (especially in T20) with maidens only coming by a combination of great bowling, wickets tumbling and smart fielding.

There is, of course, no harm done by recording maidens, but their rarity would mean that they are probably not that much relevant anymore. If Twenty20 replaces ODI in the future, then the more so.

So what can we measure? Some people have advocated counting dot balls. That may be useful, but I wonder if they do share a different problem with maidens. That is, is a bowler who bowls 5 dot balls and then concedes a six better than another bowler who gives away six singles? The Economy Rate will always be a better indication of net bowler value than maidens or dot balls.