Jul 13, 2005

New Ond-day rules and India

In a concluding part to my previous posts on the super-sub rule and powerplay 5 rule, this piece focusses on the Indian perspective. Harish Dugh, in Indian Express, has expressed fears that these new rules would be disadvantageous to India and drive Indian cricket the way Indian Hockey went, after the rules were suited for more muscle-power.

Let us have a look at the current Indian team. How many players have the experience and skills to make it into the one-day team?
Our batsmen: Sachin, Sehwag, Saurav, Dravid, Laxman, Yuvraj, Kaif, Mongia. (8)
Bowlers: Zaheer, Balaji, Irfan, Nehra, Harbhajan, Murali, Kumble (6)
Wicket-keepers: Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik. (2)

I didnt mention about other contenders like Badani, Sriram, Sodhi et al. who are reasonably good too.

Let us suppose that Dravid no longer wants to keep wickets, so one wicket-keeper is a must.. Dhoni did well against Pak, so he deserves a good run. That leaves us 11 places to fill with, but we have 14 batsmen + bowlers !! Even if Sachin and Saurav dont play in the forthcoming tournament, we have 12 players. Go with the remaining 6 batsmen and 5 bowlers (leave Kumble). For this tournament, choose a bowler as the 12th man, since the batting is little weak. After this tournament, when the batting is in full strength, choose a batsman as the super-sub.

In the three games of the Natwest Challenge, we have not quite got a full glimpse of the new rules. But, one thing is certainly clear. The toss HAS become more important than before. As you can see, all the three games were won by the team winning the toss. In the third game today, Vikram Solanki was used as a super-sub after the England batting collapsed near the half-way mark.. so England was left short of a valuable bowler like Simon Jones.

Leave the luck factor aside and hope & pray that it evens out during the course of any tournament.. In that case, I dont see any reason why the super-sub would be disadvantageous to Indian batsmen. The same would apply for the powerplay 5 rule too.. It is not true that all the muscular batsmen are great hitters. We have seen examples in all our major batsmen in India, Pakistan and Srilanka who, when in form, have torn apart any bowling challenge thrown at them. Unlike baseball, which is a slam-bang game and thus requires strong muscles, cricket requires a fine coordination of brain, eyes and hand..

Hence, in conclusion, these new rules demand a smart-thinking, risk-taking, in-form captain. The rules need to be fine-tuned, of course, to remove the toss bias, and may be, as few suggested, make a batsman pick one player as super-sub out of three announced. That would be more interesting.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ambi: mr ganguly y r u shouting at the umpire, after u have been declared out ??? athu satapadi thapu

Ganguly:dey kudumi, naa yaar theriyuma bengal tiger appidithan kathuven.
Ambi:kenya,bangaldesh kooda century adikirale australia,pakistan na 1 bathroom poralae y?
Ganguly:naan dhadha da , thevayana apo matum than aaduven.
Ambi: mr ganguly captains like ponting, inzy, smith ellarum century adichu team jeyika vaikara ,aana neengo aadave maatiringale?
Ganguly:dey kudumi,athan sachin, dravid, sehwag ellam century adikiraanungala apuram naan yethuku adikanum
Ambi: alatchiyama pesathingo Mr ganguly, aduthava talentla fame gain pandrathu thapu!!
Gnaguly:poda kudumi, yenake advice pandriya @#%@^#$%^@$%^$%^$%^

Anniyan:DEY Badu ..........
Ganguly:yaaruga neenga gillespi maathiri hair style vachurikinga???
Anniyan : naan avan ila da yema , yenda run adika ve maatingara,
Ganguly: batting form appo appo vanthutu pogum, cricketla ithellam sagajam thanaga.....
Anniyan : ippidi soli thapichidalaamnu paakiriya.....
Anniyan: 5 run edutha thapa?????????
Ganguly:onum thapu ilinga......
Anniyan: 5 matchla 5 run edutha thapa?????????
Ganguly:thapu maari thanga theriyuthu..........
Anniyan: 5 varushama 5 5 matcha 5 run edutha thapa?????????/
Ganguly: periya thapu thaanga...........
Anniyan: kamunati athathanda oruoru matchalayum nee panikitu iruka
Anniyan: unakellam ballbojanam thanda, nee than stump akthar,sami,lee,mcgrath ellarum una vachuthan bowling practice panaporaanga!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

hahahaah.. Nitin, That was AWESOME.. Laughed like 'naragam'..

BTW, did u manage to watch Anniyan?

Anonymous said...

nope, not yet. have to wait till dvd comes out.

Anonymous said...

Nitin, I think this weekend it would be screened at Jacksonville.. 2 hours of drive from ur place.. would be worth.. check it out..

Anonymous said...

ICC should look at adding the following rule:
1. Break the ODI match into 2 innings.
Each team plays 2 innings of 25 overs a side each.
2. This will offset any toss bias.
as eluded by you.

I liked your analysis on the new rules.
I havent seen Anniyan yet but I read your review.

Anonymous said...

Although I didnt watch Anninyan, I get enough about Anninyan from SunTv.

I enjoyed the Anninyan-Ganguly exchange in your WebSite.

It made me laugh!!!

thanks!

P.S:- I didnt get the drift the first time!

Anonymous said...

Sachin Fan.. Thanks.. i am a big die-hard fan of sachin too..

Your suggestion on splitting up the innings is interesting and I hope that it gets introduced by the ICC commitee in one of the next meetings (they meet once a year.. damn!!)

anniyan-ganguly conversation was posted by Nitin...

Anonymous said...

Neat work Nitin!

Reminds me of the famous Nayagan dialogue:- avane nirutha sollu....


GP-
I just ran into your blog space today. Tidy work! I am sure I will visit this very often!

Yes I think comparing Sewag to tendulkar is like comparing Mohan to Kamal or VijayKanth to Rajini.

Sewag reminds me of Srikkanth!

There can be only 1 Tendulkar ever.

Anonymous said...

Tendulkar-fan, thanks..

U are right.. there is no Tendulkar anywhere atleast now.. I keep defending him all the time for all sorts of stupid questions and arguments that my friends put up..

Anonymous said...

i hope tendular does well in the coming tournament, he seems to be getting to many injuries the last couple years. he was saying tha he is going to retire after 2007 world cup. i hope India wins the worldcup just for tendulkar. he is the best. who do you guys think will be the next tendulkar?

Anonymous said...

Oh Nitin, dont break my heart plz.. I havent seen anywhere sachin mentioning his retirement after the next worldcup.. I think he would most likely think of the 2011 version (he would be 38 then).. Even though he is the senior-most cricketer around, luckily, he is not the oldermost..

As long as guys like Lara, the old Aus gang, Jayasuriya and others keep playing, he wouldnt retire.. Moreover, he has that PASSION for cricket.. so, I would count on nothing before 2011.

I dont see any next Tendulkar in the horizon.. though I wish to see one soon (for the country's sake)..

Anonymous said...

oh, I would be the most happiest person if Tendulkar doesn't retire. I heard about this a long time back, so it might be false news. yeah, i hope players like Tendulkar, Jayasuriya, Lara play until 2011, watching these players play is what got me interested in cricket.

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