Mongoose - good for the game?

[thevortex]

Is the Mongoose the death knell to spinners and medium pacers in the subcontinental wickets? If the bat is the Mongoose then is the ball (and therefore the game itself) the proverbial snake about to be butchered? What are your thoughts?

[gaurav92]

Owning a mongoose bat is not the end of the spinners, the batsman must know how to use the long handle to good effect as well.In a way its good because it will bring in some more high scoring games and will step up the run rate in the middle overs in an ODI game, where the boundaries are mostly dried up.Still i think that it cannot be used in any format except T20s, its no doubt a great innovation, but i still feel that the game must be in balance, already we are having elongated powerplays, batting powerplays, shorter boundaries etc that assist the batsman heavily.And now, this mongoose can really kill the dreams of a side relying on spinners in the middle overs to bring the run rate down. To sum up, i would like to see Mongoose bat just to see how the bowlers react to it, and what strategy the bowler uses to combat the Big Mongoose.And without any doubt it should be used in T20s preferably and for some clean strikers, A Mongoose bat in the death overs of an ODI game is no problem at all.

[thevortex]

Not saying I reject your idea entirely. But just to throw out a thought - why should the overworked and oppressed bowlers have to respond once more with a new set of tactics aiming to further empower the batting tribe? A squash ball within the glove is legal. A bat with double the normal length and half the normal size of actual striking willow (highly compressed) is legal. But anything that the bowlers do is illegal. More than one bouncer per over is illegal. Etc, etc. Like I said, just a thought.

[Roshanrocks]

Bowlers should go one strike, we need new snake balls that swing prodigiously rendering the mongoose useless, the mongoos id useless against defensive shots for short balls, think about it, a bouncer balled to your face , you instinctively go for a backfoot defensive stroke... u suudenly realise there is not enough bat.. :D the ball hits the handle... caught behind.... or worse.. it hits the fingerz

[gaurav92]

Not saying I reject your idea entirely. But just to throw out a thought - why should the overworked and oppressed bowlers have to respond once more with a new set of tactics aiming to further empower the batting tribe? A squash ball within the glove is legal. A bat with double the normal length and half the normal size of actual striking willow (highly compressed) is legal. But anything that the bowlers do is illegal. More than one bouncer per over is illegal. Etc, etc. Like I said, just a thought.

Well, this is called a "Batsmen's Game" isnt it?

[Sachinism]

Don't mind it in T20, because thats what people want to see. But in other cricket no way, being a slogging tool, it would make batsmen feel they can swing anything towards a vacant area of the ground and get away with it

[gaurav92]

It will definitely spoil some youngsters technique and he will be dismissed easly in a situation which demands occupying the crease, also it will make players slog across the line to a ball for a boundary, where the similar result can be obtained by a much better and a risk free text book stroke.

[Gunner_Mania]

I was watching Harsha Bhogle's program on one of the news channels later that night. He made a very pertinent point - the bat doesn't make the difference, its the man that is wielding the bat that makes the difference:) Tendulkar of yore would probably have done some serious damage using the bat, but probably not today's Tendulkar, where it is more grace than brute force. Sehwag / Yuvraj would probably make better use of the bat then say Dravid, but then again the argument would be Sehwag & Yuvraj can hit the ball out of the park anyways more often than Dravid.

[Gunner_Mania]

Well' date=' this is called a "Batsmen's Game" isnt it?[/quote'] No it is called a Gentleman's game:P

[gaurav92]

^Gentlemen rarely exist nowadays therefore the new quote says "Its a batsmen's game."

[thevortex]

Nice one Gunner! I would hate to follow, write and opine about a game which is unidimensional. Cricket - even today - has multiple dimensions. Not just that we have two separate disciplines such as batting and bowling but that there is also so much variety and skill to bowling. There is richer skill breadth in our game than in any other game anywhere in the world - arguably :). Further, I grew up watching Ambrose, Marshall, Kapil Dev, Wasim Akram etc. So getting a batsman clean bowled or bamboozled was every bit as exciting as hitting a sixer. Do you think it would be the same with the next generation of youngsters? If the game keeps on veering towards the batsman, I dont think so. And that would be a giant blow for the game itself.

[Gunner_Mania]

I am sitting on the fence with this one. I really don't know. Obviously, if the bat is legal for T20, it is legal for tests. You can't have it for one and not the other. T20 at the moment is all about DLF Maximums:) The more the merrier. Sure there are exceptions but we are not talking about them. Going back to my earlier point about 'the bat doesn't make the difference, its the man that is wielding the bat that makes the difference' - I can't think of a batsman in his right mind who would be willing to use the Mongoose say on a 'genuine' 5th day Indian pitch, where the ball is turning, or a cloudy morning at Headingley or Old Trafford with perfect seam and swing conditions. Can a batsman using a mongoose do an Artherton V South Africa when he played two days to save a Test match, I doubt it. I think its all nice and dandy for a slog fest, but not for a test match.

[Ram]

Who said The Mongoose is a 'slogger's' bat? Its a bat, like any other cricket bat. You can play absolutely normal defensive shots against it, both against pace and spin and against full pitched and short-pitched bowling. We've been so used to the image of the cricket in its current dimensions that some of us find it hard to digest any deviation, but I dont see any problem in welcoming it into the fold. Sure, the bat has been obviously designed to promote power-hitting and bat speed, but hey, whats wrong with it? After all, it could promote more exciting strokeplay, specifically the horizontal bat shots like cuts and pulls. Who does not want these in a game of cricket?

[Holysmoke]

Maybe we will see more spinners bowl bouncers:woot: Also, we could have batsmen using different bats for different bowlers:hmmm:

[thevortex]

Well marris_mania - to answer your question, I for one dont want cuts and pulls at the expense of the bowlers :). Anyway the bat is not designed for cuts and pulls. It is designed to obliterate the yorker. And I dont like that - given that bowlers are already limited to one bouncer per over. What do you suggest bowlers do in such circumstances? They might as well toss a coin and decide whether the ball is going to go for a 4 or a 6, na? Thats too bad, in my opinion. Gunner - yes, I dont anticipate that this would be used for Test matches. But again as you rightly point out there is no ruling this out for Test matches. Think about using this for Test matches in India or Sri Lanka when the opposition picks 3 spinners! Ouch! The 30% extra power and 20% faster bat speed etc, etc, would make the difference between getting caught in the deep and getting caught by a spectator well within the stands. [You know what guys, consider me properly biased. Because I bowl leg spin and the more I think about it this bat gives me the creeps :)]

[thevortex]

And just to clarify - yes the Mongoose is a slogger's bat. Or at least a driver's bat. :) As in it is built to drive the ball even if it is pitched right up into the crease. The bat is not made to defend on the backfoot. But yes a front foot defense can be managed.

[Ram]

Well marris_mania - to answer your question, I for one dont want cuts and pulls at the expense of the bowlers :).

Why not? If the bowlers can innovate, fabricate slower balls and master revere-swing, why cant the batsmen follow suit as well? I think the game needs a healthy dose of hooks and pulls and the Mongoose is almost custom-designed for those, given how it significantly increases leverage and decreases strain on a batsmen. In short, the energy expended by a batsmen to execute a pull shot in the Mongoose will be far lesser than the energy required to play the same using a regular bat. And because of the increased leverage, there will be increased bat-speed, leading to more power.

Anyway the bat is not designed for cuts and pulls. It is designed to obliterate the yorker. And I dont like that - given that bowlers are already limited to one bouncer per over. What do you suggest bowlers do in such circumstances? They might as well toss a coin and decide whether the ball is going to go for a 4 or a 6, na? Thats too bad, in my opinion.

Dont know what you mean by 'designed to obliterate the yorker'.. The bat is the same length as a regular cricket bat, only the handle is longer. And reg. the fears that the Mongoose might prove to be the shooting range for batsmen to have target practice at the bowlers, well, we all know that Gilly smashed a super 100 against Lanka using a squash ball in his glove, but that does not mean everyone who's gonna use a squash ball can do the same.

[Sachinism]

I called it a sloggers bat, because with that in your hand you know you can get a really good swing at the ball, which means you'll more often than not swing anything that is slightly full

[vvvslaxman]

When the ball is bounced and you don't time there is less chance of ball catching the top edge of the bat. We see lot of batsmen getting out when the ball hit the splice. But there is less area now. So it might miss that area altogether.

[S.Bond]

I don't like the look of it. I am against it.