Indian cricketing great Sachin Tendulkar has warned the International Cricket Council (ICC) that use of two new balls in ODIs is a “perfect recipe for disaster” with the game tilting heavily towards the batsmen and making the bowlers look clueless.
The recent ODI between England and Australia is an example of this. England batting first piled up an unbelievably high score of around 480 as the Aussie bowlers struggled to contain the opposition batting in the most favourable batting conditions.
With two new balls being used, Sachin Tendulkar rightly said that there is no chance for the pace bowlers to get proper reverse swing as each ball would only be 25 overs old at the time of the innings close. At the same time, the two balls will not get much old and soft, which means that hitting the ball out of the park becomes very easy.
The two new balls thing has made ODI cricket too predictable and one feels that even the most loyal cricket fan could take a break from Cricket and use the time to take up a new hobby like playing popular online casino games like poker or blackjack, or maybe learn to play the Guitar.
Sachin Tendulkar
Sachin Tendulkar tweeted: “Having 2 new balls in one day cricket is a perfect recipe for disaster as each ball is not given the time to get old enough to reverse. We haven’t seen reverse swing, an integral part of the death overs, for a long time.”
For spinners, the two new balls is a big curse as they would not be able to impart that many revolutions on a semi-new ball which they would have otherwise got on a slightly older ball.
The relatively new rule from the ICC means the good old reverse swing is gone out of the window. We no longer get to see the exciting slog overs where fast bowlers come up with the big inswinging yorkers to turn the match or innings on its head.
All we see nowadays are runs getting piled up at an unrealistic rate while the bowlers becoming second fiddle in the match.
Waqar Younis, the former great Pakistani fast bowler, who was famous for his inswinging yorker, endorsed Sachin Tendulkar’s views, by tweeting: “Reason why we don’t produce many attacking fast bowlers..They all very defensive in their approach…always looking for change ups..totally agree with you @sachin_rt reverse swing is almost vanished..”
As we know Sachin Tendulkar’s views on cricket are highly respected as he is considered only second or even on par with Sir Don Bradman. Let us hope that the ICC reconsiders its decision on the use of two new balls in ODIs to enable the bowlers to stay in the contest.