Bowlers? Who needs them anyways?

[King]

The ICC cricket committee's latest list of recommendations risks tilting the game even more towards batsmen. More... Bowlers? Who needs them anyways? NEW DELHI, June 2: Someone forgot to tell the ICC that its regular revamping of One-day cricket's rules, making them progressively in favour of batsmen, has cut no ice with its jaded spectators. A tedious World Cup marked by a glut of forgettable no-contests has already generated unprecedented cricket fatigue. The ODI calendar is being stretched to bursting point by greedy, myopic administrators, and the game is in serious danger of losing its raison d'etre: the balance between bat and ball. Flat pitches, lop-sided rules, highly-evolved bludgeons passing off as bats and the sheer spate of ODIs are reducing bowlers — those hobbling, nervy, stitched-together-with-safety-pins veterans who rule the ICC's top 20 charts — to nothing more than professionals hired to amuse the batsmen. The argument isn't new, but it's fast reaching critical stage. It's clear cricket is battling with changing paradigms, but does it have the vision to win the war? From the ODI recommendations suggested by the revamped Sunil Gavaskar-chaired ICC Cricket Committee — the grist for many a dinner-table debate following its bizarre, quickly-forgotten 'supersub' ruling in 2005 — it would appear not. Some of the suggestions do try and give an inch to the bowler, like the idea of an additional fielder outside the 30-yard circle in Powerplays, doing away with glue to prepare pitches, and the advice to push boundaries back to a maximum of 90 yards whenever possible. But it's more than offset by some unimaginative gimmicks. The most disturbing of these is plucked straight out of Twenty20 — a free hit off a front-foot no-ball — in a tacit admission that the 50-over game might be perilously close to running its course. "Don't tell me," said a surprised Venkatesh Prasad, India's new bowling coach whose plate is already full trying to keep an injury-prone frontline attack battle-ready, when TOI told him about the recommendation, "I hope the ICC doesn't approve this." There's more: A mandatory change of ball after 35 overs. "This will negate any chance of reverse swing later on, naturally," said Prasad, adding: "To put it mildly, it'll really be a challenge, for both pacers and spinners." That's not all, either: The Committee wants one of the Powerplays to be selected by the captain of the batting side, which former India coach and pacer Madan Lal terms an "alarming idea". So is this the only way cricket can go? "It's essentially a simple game," argues former captain Bishan Singh Bedi, "Unfortunately the lowest common denominator is getting lower and mediocrity is being encouraged. Why are officials hell-bent on imposing their ideas at the expense of the game? What we're seeing now can be termed cricket inflation. Where have all the brains gone? Why not a few concessions for the bowlers?" "The ICC thinks people want to see batsmen hit sixes, so the rules are being tweaked to that effect," thinks Lal, "You might see a side score 500 runs with these rules, but you won't get an even contest. Good spinners are rare, because the rules don't allow them to bowl the way they want, and fast bowlers are dead. It's a crime." It's also a brutally honest opinion. Almost every other pacer, from Flintoff to Shoaib to Munaf, is injured, and with the sole exception of Brett Lee (whom we haven't seen in action for a while), Shane Bond, Shaun Tait and Lasith Malinga, the others have found their ability to generate pace dipping by the day. Even Makhaya Ntini isn't immune. Gone are the days when fast bowlers only used to crib about wides being given for balls landing three inches outside leg stump. The modern batsman, riding on adrenaline, has been given the license to massacre the coaching manual and go for his strokes unhampered, while bowlers are being reduced to nervous wrecks. Pacemen accused of picking the seam or indulging in other forms of tampering are criminalised and treated with disdain, yet when a frontline batsman's technologically-enhanced blade is deemed as illegal by the MCC, there's merely a stifled yawn. There's the one-bouncer rule, of course, but if it's over the batsman's head it's a no-ball! "Bowlers now need to be much, much more careful," feels Prasad, "Hardly anybody goes all-out in ODIs anymore. There's too much cricket and too less creativity. Bowling is a tough job, and there is a big lack of motivation for the younger crop. Someone must do something." It doesn't appear that the Committee — which, incidentally, has very few bowlers in its ranks, with the exception of Ian Bishop and Michael Holding — is too concerned, although it has suggested that lesser ODIs be played. It's all the more imperative to close the gap between bowlers and batsmen because even Test cricket is going through an identity crisis: Of the 10 Test-playing nations, three, maybe more, are struggling to compete (one of them has been disallowed to play, they're so bad) and without Indian money, the game has no clout. The last straw would be picking a side of 10 batsmen and a bowling machine in a 50-over game, and replacing spectators with cameras. The cricket committee's suggestions, of course, are mere recommendations at this stage, but a good indicator of how uninspired cricket's thinking hats have become. Any fresh ideas out there?

[beetle]

Gavaskar is really taking the fun out of the game and turning it into a road show with bowlers as baits......very sad!

[yoda]

everything but replay challenge. well done.

[beetle]

I wonder what they have against the reply challenge.It is one of the most sanest suggestions ever.It's almost like sunil gavaskar was never a player and never had to deal with the the unfair decisions.....or may be he is one of those "we suffered so why shouldn't they " guys!I am fast losing whatever little respect I have for sunil the iCC puppet.

[Holysmoke]

I dont think the time is far before a team goes in with 11 batsmen.. some of which who can bowl (eg.Ganguly, Tendulkar, Yuvraj, Sehwag, Pathan + 6 other batsmen)