Let’s stop complaining about these pitches, bowlers will eventually evolve.

[Gollum]

Why must the onus always lie on bowlers to evolve? Why never the batsmen? You prepare a dustbowl or green mamba (of late) and ICC loses its marbles....prepare a patta and its kosher. How long will bowlers be treated like lowest castes in our sport? And they do the bulk of the work, brave serious injuries, pain etc while batsmen are the lazy bums. 

[maniac]

6 minutes ago, Gollum said:

Why must the onus always lie on bowlers to evolve? Why never the batsmen? You prepare a dustbowl or green mamba (of late) and ICC loses its marbles....prepare a patta and its kosher. How long will bowlers be treated like lowest castes in our sport? And they do the bulk of the work, brave serious injuries, pain etc while batsmen are the lazy bums. 

Scoop shot, countering inswinging Yorkers by standing deep in side the crease/helicopter shots, switch hits etc. isn’t that evolution?

 

 

[cowboysfan]

how?.bowlers have always  depended  on the pitch to give them something to work  with,these pitches are lifeless.i wouldn't  watch a session  if a test had similar pitches. 

[maniac]

3 minutes ago, cowboysfan said:

how?.bowlers have always  depended  on the pitch to give them something to work  with,these pitches are lifeless.i wouldn't  watch a session  if a test had similar pitches. 

Tests should be bowling friendly and LOIs should be batting friendly.

 

Infact if batting strike rates and averages ,average team scores and even bowling economies and averages have gone up in LOIs

 

Bowling averages for spinners and pacers look like a million bucks these days 

 

 

[Clarke]

These wickets are at most acceptable on rare occasion, not the norm. What next, play using a ball without seam and let the bowlers evolve ?

 

Besides the pitch, if only they made a ball which lasted 50 overs, which can't be so hard. Replacing the worn out ball wasn't this bad. 

 

[Cricketics]

Perhaps the white balls being used aren't of the same quality as red balls either. They also need to look at the balls being used. Red balls are more favorable to bowlers and are generally better quality, at least historically this has been the case. May be look to improving the quality of the ball so they don't die off early and bowlers can still find one side shine at the end of 20th over. 

 

 

[Gollum]

47 minutes ago, maniac said:

Scoop shot, countering inswinging Yorkers by standing deep in side the crease/helicopter shots, switch hits etc. isn’t that evolution?

 

Fair enough, batsmen can play the scoops and helicopters on normal pitches, why the need to further flatten them? So that perfectly executed deliveries on 4th stump good length get deposited 15 rows back over cow corner with minimum effort/risk? Admit it man, these minor innovations like scoop and upper cut have been in the game for a long time, only recently have scores skyrocketed. Not because of these gimmicks but because more good balls are being deposited for 4s/6s courtesy batsmen hitting across the line with no fear of ball changing its trajectory. Check where bulk of the runs come these days.

 

If bat technology can be changed so that they get massive wooden clubs the weight of tooth brushes why can't the state of the ball be altered? Maybe have a prominent seam on deliveries (like Dukes) and ensure they don't lose their shine after 3 overs....don't even need to change the weight of the ball to do all this. But no, bowlers get the Kookaburra which has no proper seam and which loses shine after the 1st hit to the boundary.

 

Why 2 new balls? To eliminate reverse swing and spin, attacking 2 vital components of bowling.....maybe next time ask batsmen to eliminate cover drive and square cut from their repertoire and then we'll see how evolved they are with 2 major tools lacking. Again if durability of the ball is a concern, play with 2 Dukes  

 

Leaving aside PP rules which have especially harmed spinners so much, in this age of spring loaded super bats what's the need to bring in boundary ropes resulting in mishits of wicket taking deliveries going for sixes?

 

Switch hit...seriously man, in that case why should a bowler announce over/round the wicket before every over....allow him the luxury to change the angle of approach in his final finish...but nah, that's illegal. 

 

Batsman can do Kathakali to distract the bowler but if the bowler does some funky thing umpire calls it dead ball. Batsman can choose to meet the ball anywhere, even halfway down the pitch but bowler has to abide by the laxman rekha, else no ball and the depravity called free hit. If bowler does a mankaded he is made to feel guilty even though ICC rules support him. Batsman can hit anywhere but wides get called liberally. Andy Roberts developed 2 kinds of bouncers but hey in this era 2nd bouncer=wide even if well directed.

 

Open your eyes maniac garu, batsmen have it way too easy and the game is rigged in their flavor. It is literally a master-slave relation in its current form, bowler has limited combinations of moves to work with, but batsmen has no restriction. Think of it as a chess game between 2 players where one plays a move, followed by multiple moves by the other, keeps on repeating...each move responded by multiple moves by opponent..is it a fair fight? Or making a boxer fight an MMA fighter in a special rules arena where both parties will have to abide by the rules of their respective sports, fists vs whole body.

 

Bottom-line: You can't tie the hands of bowlers and expect them to evolve. Each successive rule change enforced by the governing body is only defanging the low caste participants of cricket.

Edited May 17, 2019 by Gollum

[chewy]

1 hour ago, maniac said:

How is it different from a slow pitch where the team batting first has the advantage and green track where the team batting 2nd has the advantage. The new PP rules makes it easy for a team batting 2nd anyways. Now with that in mind, teams don’t know what is a safe target anymore. That makes it exciting from ball 1.

 

Now ball is in the bowlers court to evolve and innovate. It has happened throughout cricket history. We need to change with times and evolve, not clamor for the past.

Batsmen has evolved thanks to thicker and heavier bats

Maybe bowlers can evolve if allowed to use infamous White Duke ball

[chewy]

2 bouncer rule is so BS, brought in so white men could compete with WI pace 

[zen]

From Ind's perspective, I am not too sure if these tracks could benefit as:

 

• For a change, Ind's strength is bowling, which could be nullified on such tracks 
• Ind's has quite a few low SR players, who think that a flat track is an opportunity to score a 100 even if it leads to a below-par total. For e.g. a 100 of 100 balls is not the same as 100 of 80 balls aimed at driving the momentum away from the other team on such tracks

 

Ind will have to play exceptional cricket to make it to the knockouts! I do not see an automatic place for it just because other teams do not appear that strong on paper 

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by zen

[Laaloo]

2 hours ago, maniac said:

One thing though, you need to increase the boundary size. People love power hitting and distance. A guy like Rahane hitting 60m 6s is disgraceful. I am ok with these pitches, not the boundary sizes

Definitely they need to increase the boundary sizes.

[Laaloo]

Pakistani bowlers strike rate in the first 10 over season is 86 lol. England is 60. India is 41. 

 

Stats for for this year 

[zen]

17 minutes ago, Laaloo said:

Pakistani bowlers strike rate in the first 10 over season is 86 lol. England is 60. India is 41. 

 

Stats for for this year 

I do not follow Pak cricket much but Eng plays on batting beauties at home and had that series in WI where Gayle was unstoppable

[Gollum]

@maniac surely you won't appreciate Pakistan getting so many 330+ scores consistently, balance in the Universe has to be restored. 

[maniac]

Just now, Gollum said:

@maniac surely you won't appreciate Pakistan getting so many 330+ scores consistently, balance in the Universe has to be restored. 

Pakistan gets 330+ because these are 400+ pitches. Balance is restored 

[maniac]

Exciting high scoring match today and also had the 6s and 4s. These are perfect pitches that compliment the modern day game 

[Zero_Unit]

Not sure how they will evolve when getting hit all around the park. One thing we can expect is that more bowlers/team mates getting caught cheating (sand paper gate style). If wickets are not coming, more will go the sand paper gate route. The more incident like that occurs, more likely chance for them to get caught. 

[jf1gp_1]

No they wont. 

 

For someone to evolve they need to be provided an environment. Flat track with no movement, hardly any grip with 60-70m boundary and less than 4 fielders outside circle for 40overs how will a bowler evolve ? 

[Pollack]

I don't pity pace bowlers at all even as a pace bowlers fan. If they have it in them they will make a name like Bumrah, Rabada etc. They may be expensive and yet bowl well just like Rohit might score runs but at the expense of slow starts ( ) or Pujara not scoring much runs on a green mamba but sees through a large chunk of bowling. Eventually one knows who did well in the context of pitch/conditions, quality of pace attack, teams requirements etc.

Edited May 18, 2019 by Pollack

[Straight Drive]

On 5/17/2019 at 8:27 PM, maniac said:

One thing though, you need to increase the boundary size. People love power hitting and distance. A guy like Rahane hitting 60m 6s is disgraceful. I am ok with these pitches, not the boundary sizes

Good point. The boundaries should definitely be longer in most countries.