How to Make ODI cricket more relevant ?

[PSB_Zone]

Well with 3 cricket formats and evolution of T-20 leagues , sooner rather than later 
something needs to be done to avoid boring bilateral series .T-20 is already the format for
the entry of new teams and Test cricket is also rocking but Odi needs some make over..

My suggestion is Play Asia cup each year with Bangladesh/India/Srilana/Pak/Afganistan
and Play Rest of the world Cup the same year with Australia/England/Saf/Nz/Wi

Winner of both cups to play a bilateral series of either 5 or 3 matches to be the champions
with 2 matches each in there respective countries and probably 3rd one neutral.

[Vilander]

play less number of games and that makes each game more relevant. simple.

[Trichromatic]

1. Restrict bilaterals to max 3 matches
2. Play more triangular series
3. Bring back 1 ball rule
4. Remove power plays after 10 overs
5. Allow 4 bouncers in a over in first 10 and last 10 overs. 2 bouncers in remaining 30 overs

Bouncer rule will probably make teams think more. Some bowlers will get carried away and likely to be thrashed for sixes over in last 10 overs as batsmen will look to score on misdirected balls. Some bastsmen will be exposed as they miss and play lot of dot balls. 

[Ankit_sharma03]

Please have triangluar or multination tournament 

[Jimmy Cliff]

Annual league is the only option. Would be a bitch to organize though. 

[Khota]

Think strategically. It is not in India's interst to make ODI or Tests meaningful. For India to maximize profit they should stick to T20.

[Khota]

8 hours ago, Jimmy Cliff said:

Annual league is the only option. Would be a bitch to organize though. 

Any league involving the green jealousy is a no go.

[renjith]

organize more triangular series. bilateral matches are getting more and more irrelevant and boring.

[Nonbeliever]

22 hours ago, Trichromatic said:

1. Restrict bilaterals to max 3 matches
2. Play more triangular series
3. Bring back 1 ball rule
4. Remove power plays after 10 overs
5. Allow 4 bouncers in a over in first 10 and last 10 overs. 2 bouncers in remaining 30 overs

Bouncer rule will probably make teams think more. Some bowlers will get carried away and likely to be thrashed for sixes over in last 10 overs as batsmen will look to score on misdirected balls. Some bastsmen will be exposed as they miss and play lot of dot balls. 

+1

[sourab10forever]

Easiest way is to keep everything the same and just get rid of most Bilateral series and keep only triangular/quadrangular series.

 

Make being ranked higher in the ranking have some use.

Maybe : Only the top 4 should qualify automatically for the WC. All others need to play the qualifiers.

 

[Trichromatic]

48 minutes ago, sourab10forever said:

Easiest way is to keep everything the same and just get rid of most Bilateral series and keep only triangular/quadrangular series.

 

Make being ranked higher in the ranking have some use.

Maybe : Only the top 4 should qualify automatically for the WC. All others need to play the qualifiers.

 

Only triangulars are viable. Boards don't want to lose money by being part of tournaments involving more teams. 

[GolGappe]

Logistically impossible but make every team play against every other time same number of matches home and away. Sort of like what you see in NBA/NHL leagues.. maintain points table and maybe top 4 teams can play semis and final for a huge pay cheque

[express bowling]

For ODIs ..... Play  3-match bilateral series between every country as part of a 3-year ( or 4 year )  tournament involving 1 home and 1 away series.

 

A 3-match Final series will be held once in 3 years  between the top 2 teams of that 3-year  journey.

 

Make it a more even contest between bat and ball .... I have been asking around and most people said that they preferred this over 330+ run slog-fests.  ( The first 3 matches of the India-Australia ODI series has been immensely enjoyed due to this even by part-time or casual viewers and Kuldeep's hattrick was being talked about a lot. )

 

P.s -  Even test series can be played like this, in an overall-tournament format,  over a 4-year time-frame.

 

 

Edited September 30, 2017 by express bowling

[Mosher]

The problem with triangular series is that matches not involving the host nation hardly draw any crowds. 

[Trichromatic]

21 minutes ago, Mosher said:

The problem with triangular series is that matches not involving the host nation hardly draw any crowds. 

Yes, those matches are loss scenario for everyone. Those 2 teams could play that match at either's home and earn more. Then again if you ensure that third team is a big team like Aus, Eng or India, then it may work with TV viewerships.

 

Any tournament involving Ind, Pak, Ban, and SL can be played in all these countries combined. Same goes for Aus and NZ, add any third team to mix and ensure that there is at least 1 home team. For WI, SA and Eng ensure that Ind or Aus is third team. 

[maniac]

 

Here is why ODI cricket is struggling in my opinion. 

 

New Rules

As much as people have been burnt out on slogfests, that is the only way to go about in this era with the new rules unfortunately ..on a grassy or a dusty difficult pitch if a team batting first gets out to a sub par score, the team batting 2nd will get there 9/10 times because it is that much more easier to chase. Atleast in a 300 run fest even if a team batting 2nd has it easy these days there is a little bit of pressure at stake which makes for some amount of compelling viewing.

 

Again it's the chicken or egg situation...run fests which we all used to love when they were far in between  back in the day, we all have reached a saturation point clearly evident by the posts above.

 

A 250 odd runs  per team game where the team batting 2nd gets close or chases it down with some struggle is the best odi game scenario possible but the occurrence of that is very rare and nearly impossible in the current era.

 

This shows ODI cricket as a whole has become a little predictable as we already know only 2 things will happen 9/10 times - A slogfest or a boring one sided game.predictability over a 100 overs is pretty much the biggest problem with the modern odi game.

 

Absence of star power in a lot of bilateral

games

As far as bilaterals go- Meaningless series and dead rubbers have always been around but I don't remember back in the day a Warne or a McGrath or a Donald  or an Akram skipping bilaterals to concentrate only on important tournaments and series.

 

Most bilaterals do not have teams with enough star power atleast from a bowling perspective.May be what I mentioned above has a lot to do with it.

 

Hell even the odi series after the Ashes has Eng-Aus fielding 2nd string lineups at times.

 

Tournaments have more intensity than Bilaterals 

 

Infact ODI from a team competitiveness standpoint is at its peak right now....Srilanka upset India in CT but lost a series to Zimbabwe. Bangladesh made it to the semis of the CT...WI are at their lowest point but on their day beat Pak and scored 350+ against England.

 

There are no teams that would lose for sure in a one on one setting anymore..yes obviously  there are weak and strong teams ,but there are no teams you can call as minnows anymore.

 

What the above point leads to is that....having strong and weak teams can make a bilateral boring but at the same time presence of no definite minnow means tournaments can have that much more intensity and have the any thing can happen edge to them,which the bilaterals cannot keep pace with.

 

so only  way to save ODI cricket is to give each game a context.

 

Sure slogfests can get repititive but there is no getting around that in this era, so giving the games context will lead to better management of player workload that will have teams playing with more star-power and in result raise the intensity of the games which is missing so badly in the modern odi game.

 

Edited October 1, 2017 by maniac

[beetle]

On 29/09/2017 at 11:47 PM, Trichromatic said:

1. Restrict bilaterals to max 3 matches
2. Play more triangular series
3. Bring back 1 ball rule
4. Remove power plays after 10 overs
5. Allow 4 bouncers in a over in first 10 and last 10 overs. 2 bouncers in remaining 30 overs

Bouncer rule will probably make teams think more. Some bowlers will get carried away and likely to be thrashed for sixes over in last 10 overs as batsmen will look to score on misdirected balls. Some bastsmen will be exposed as they miss and play lot of dot balls. 

4 bouncers per over !!

Might as well hand the bowler and batsmen some boxing gloves and have them have a bout in the middle .

 

We are now looking at bowlers innovating and using their brains to counter the batsmen.40 bouncers will only encourage  intimidating bowling .

 

There should be a limit of 15- 20 bouncers a bowler can bowl in his 10 overs with no restriction on how many per over. So if the bowler  wants to use bouncers to get the wkt, he can bowl all six balls as bouncer but once his quota is over, he has to use his brains to do other stuff too.

 

[Trichromatic]

12 minutes ago, beetle said:

4 bouncers per over !!

Might as well hand the bowler and batsmen some boxing gloves and have them have a bout in the middle .

 

We are now looking at bowlers innovating and using their brains to counter the batsmen.40 bouncers will only encourage  intimidating bowling .

 

There should be a limit of 15- 20 bouncers a bowler can bowl in his 10 overs with no restriction on how many per over. So if the bowler  wants to use bouncers to get the wkt, he can bowl all six balls as bouncer but once his quota is over, he has to use his brains to do other stuff too.

 

It's not easy to bowl 4 bouncers in an over. If bowlers try that for 2-3 overs, they will struggle to even hit pace in 4th. So it's not something which directly favors bowlers without any dowside. They can't go on bowling bouncers madly, they will have to be smart and choose when to use it. If not 4 then 3 will be good. Idea is to give them something extra to work with which can't be used blindly. Moreover if they get it wrong, it's likely to go for four with batsman just giving direction to the ball. 

 

This is not something which will stop runs much either.

[maniac]

On 9/29/2017 at 2:17 PM, Trichromatic said:

1. Restrict bilaterals to max 3 matches
2. Play more triangular series
3. Bring back 1 ball rule
4. Remove power plays after 10 overs
5. Allow 4 bouncers in a over in first 10 and last 10 overs. 2 bouncers in remaining 30 overs

Bouncer rule will probably make teams think more. Some bowlers will get carried away and likely to be thrashed for sixes over in last 10 overs as batsmen will look to score on misdirected balls. Some bastsmen will be exposed as they miss and play lot of dot balls. 

No...those rules only cater to some hardcore fan boy but doesn't do jack to get people back into the odi format.

 

3 match series sure but that cuts down on the possibility of having 1 extra dead rubber game Pretty much.

 

How is playing a triangular series without context any better than playing a meaningless bilateral...the WI-SL-Zim triangular recently was pretty good with some close games but how many of those moments are memorable?

 

1 ball rule and 10 over power play will bring in spin and reverse swing back great and give some edge to the bowlers but will also take us back to the time where middle overs were called the boring period or recess time in a odi game.They were introduced to save the odi game from being boring and outdated in the first place.

 

4 bouncers in the first 10 overs??? Not plausible and that is just taking one extreme step to tilt the scale in the opposite direction because odi game has become too batting friendly...odi game was always a batsman game to begin with infact cricket in general...you have to find that seeet spot to give bowlers something while still keeping with the basics of odi cricket which is that of being a batsmen's  game..making it a bowlers game is not the solution.

 

so the only plausible solution is 2 bouncers per over rule which is fair to add to the new rules which is making it in an out and out batsmans game.

 

Edited October 1, 2017 by maniac

[SK_IH]

Cricket is the only wherein every now n then fans & administrators think of tweaking rules to jazz up the game lol